This text deals with the topic of housing shortage vs. residential vacancy – housing market intervention as a task of politics? At the beginning there will be some basic assertions on the relation of market vs. state, especially bearing in mind, the overall importance and social responsibility...

There are four major challenges for housing policy in the near and midterm future: First, rents in many German conurbations have been rising significantly faster than incomes over the last five years. Though it can rightly be argued, that the suggested policies of the new German federal...

The regional differences in the housing markets are enormous and will continue to exacerbate in the future. The main task for the housing policy is to take appropriate long term measures depending on the market structure. A central aspect of future housing policy is the site development....

We analyse the determinants of house prices in the primary and secondary market of 17 largest cities in Poland during the 2002-2013 period. We find that prices are driven by economic fundamentals, such as income growth or rise in employment. Prices in the secondary market react to increases in...

The Narodowy Bank Polski organized during November 14-15, 2013 an international workshop to discuss current issues in the field of real estate analysis from the central bank's point of view. The development of residential real estate prices as well as commercial real estate prices and real...

In this paper, I analyze the distribution of rental prices in Berlin using quantile estimates and decomposition methods. These methods have been rarely applied in the field of housing economics but have proven to offer relevant insights into the evolution of price distributions. The shift of...

The Finnish housing market is volatile. After declining significantly as the global financial crisis unfolded, housing prices and investment recovered to reach new peaks. This paper uses a small econometric model to assess the role of fundamentals in housing price and investment developments....

This Working Paper studies ways to stimulate the private rental sector (PRS) of the housing market – and compares experiences with policies and reforms in Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and the Czech Republic. Although in many countries the PRS has decreased in importance since the Second...

The real estate sector is of particular interest from a central bank's perspective; due to its size, it directly and indirectly affects economic developments, financial stability and the monetary policy stance. The volume collects the papers by economists of the Bank of Italy and the discussions...