Like many other assets, housing prices are quite volatile relative to observable changes in fundamentals. If we are going to understand boom-bust housing cycles, we must incorporate housing supply. In this paper, we present a simple model of housing bubbles that predicts that places with more...

The volatility of house prices and construction levels is high. Both exhibit strong positive serial correlations at 1-year frequencies, Prices show strong mean reversion over 5-year periods. This paper asks whether these facts can be reconciled in a dynamic housing model, where in the tradition...

Urban economists understand housing prices with a spatial equilibrium approach that assumes people must be indifferent across locations. Since the spatial no arbitrage condition is inherently imprecise, other economists have turned to different no arbitrage conditions, such as the prediction...

Even though the GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, meet their low-income related housing goals in aggregate, the spatial distribution of their loan purchases within metropolitan areas does not closely match the spatial distribution of households qualified to borrow under the goals. Tracts located...

The rise of new information technology is likely to bring about three broad changes to the commercial brokerage industry. The first, which already is occurring, is the development of specialist firms that perform only a part of the brokerage process such as the research or listings function. We...

Most of America’s largest cities in 1950 have declined since then. In these declining areas, most homes cost less than the cost of new construction. In 1990, nearly 60 percent of all owner-occupied single-unit residences in Midwest central cities were valued at less than the cost of...

Over the last two decades, only a few New Urbanism projects have been built. These include Laguna West in California, Kentlands in Maryland, and Celebration in Florida. The question that arises is whether current lending and investment practices constrain NU developments. Leading developers,...