The paper aims at measuring the rental housing market regulations in Germany between 1913 and 2015. Four classes of housing policy are considered: Rent controls, tenant protection, rationing of housing, and fostering of social housing. Based on a thorough analysis of federal and regional...

Real estate prices are central to a range of themes that are, e.g., relevant for monetary policy, community development, environmental valuation, and economic planning more generally. This paper developes a real estate index based on apartment offer prices on the post code level for Germany,...

Nach Angaben der Deutschen Bundesbank sind die Immobilienpreise in den Jahren 2011 und 2012 jeweils um über 5% gestiegen. Nicht zuletzt aufgrund der dramatischen gesamtwirtschaftlichen Folgen der Immobilienpreisblasen in den USA und in Spanien stellt sich die Frage, ob auch in Deutschland eine...

Since 2010, particularly in urban agglomerations, the German housing market has experienced stark house price and rent increases. Immigration from rural and smaller settlements as well as international migration into German urban areas, has fuelled an increase in housing demand and led to severe...

This paper uses recent data for single-family home purchases to study the effects of the German real estate transfer tax. We aim to separate the tax’s short-term anticipatory effects from its long-term effects on real estate transactions. The data indicate that an increase in the transfer tax...

This paper provides an analysis of the convergence pattern of German housing prices and rents employing a new dataset that covers all the country's administrative districts. In addition to conventional tests for 𝛽-convergence and 𝜎-convergence, we apply Phillips and Sul's (2007) approach...

This study is the first to assess and contribute to a better understanding of the factors affecting the prices of closed-end real estate funds (CEREFs) in Germany’s secondary market. The dataset is based on 16,718 observations of realized transaction prices from 412 different German CEREFs;...

The belief that home ownership makes people happy is probably one of the most widespread intuitive theories of happiness. However, whether it is accurate is an open question. Based on individual panel data, we explore whether home buyers systematically overestimate the life satisfaction...

Germany like many other European countries subsidize commuting by granting the right to deduct commuting expenses from the income tax base. This regulation has often been changed and has regularly been under debate during the last decades. The pros (e.g. causing efficiency gains with respect to...

Germany like many other European countries subsidize commuting by granting the right to deduct commuting expenses from the income tax base. This regulation has often been changed and has regularly been under debate during the last decades. The pros (e.g. causing efficiency gains with respect to...