A considerable housing boom has been a key feature of persistently large saving-investment imbalances in New Zealand over the past decade. Wealth is concentrated to a greater extent in property compared to most other OECD countries, leaving households and the banking system heavily exposed to a...

This paper delivers new evidence on the individual and policy drivers of residential mobility, covering a wide range of housing-related policies and conditions but also other relevant policy areas. The analysis uses household-level micro datasets allowing for an investigation of the drivers of...

We review the main studies on house price synchronization and conduct an empirical analysis using OECD house price indices. We provide a discussion of the contributing factors of synchronization, with a focus on the demand and supply dimensions. Synchronization across both countries and cities...

Extensive structural reforms since the early 1990s have strengthened the resilience of the Swedish economy to shocks. However, more needs to be done to better manage near-term risks and ensure that growth remains sustainable in the longer run. Reforming the housing market would reduce the risks...

Israeli house prices have risen by over 50% over the past three years. In part this reflects the fact that for several years housing construction had not kept pace with increases in the number of households. In response to these developments, hitherto sluggish planning-approval processes are...

A well-functioning housing market is essential for economic prosperity and well-being. A combination of favourable economic and financial conditions and tight housing supply led to sharp increases in real house prices between the mid-1990s and end 2007, which spurred household consumption. While...

The response of housing prices to changes in the geography of the economy and population within cities is empirically understudied. This paper examines the spatial dynamics of the Hong Kong housing market between 1992 and 2008, a time period that includes two periods of strong price appreciation...

High and rising prices in Chinese housing markets have attracted global attention. Price-to-rent ratios in Beijing and seven other large markets across the country have increased by 30% to 70% since the beginning of 2007. Current price-to-rent ratios imply very low user costs of no more than...

Research on housing supply has grown owing to improved data combined with heightened interest in policies such as local land use regulations. Heterogeneity in supply conditions across markets is shown to be essential to understanding the growing price dispersion across metropolitan areas, as...

We show that the Kaldor (1940) trade cycle mechanism can be meaningfully applied to the market for residential housing space, since the demand for houses may be positively related to the housing price in a mid-range price domain, while it is downward sloping for house prices sufficiently small...