This Economic Letter describes one of the measures commonly used to gauge the fundamental value of housing—the price-rent ratio. We describe the kinds of forces that cause the ratio to move over time and document which forces appear to be most important. We document the way that the housing...

We show that house prices may be driven entirely by the demands of one identifiable group for several years and then by demands of another group at other times. We present evidence that house prices in Hawaii were subject to such regime shifts. Prices responded to demands associated with...

Real estate prices in a local market can be driven by an identifiable group of purchasers. In Hawaii, residents of both the U.S. mainland and Japan have been significant purchasers of homes. An analysis suggests that house prices in Hawaii were driven primarily by purchasers from the U.S....

This Economic Letter reviews the ways residential real estate prices and liquidity vary over time and over different states of the economy and discusses the implications of this behavior for consumers and lenders.

We develop an overlapping generations model of the real estate market in which search frictions and a debt overhang combine to generate price persistence and illiquidity. Illiquidity stems from heterogeneity in agent real estate valuations. The variance of agent valuations determines how quickly...