Housing affordability has been a topic of much interest in New Zealand over recent years with the median house price increasing by over 50% between 2004 and 2008. The aim of this paper is to inform debate by drawing out evidence from two surveys: the Household Economic Survey (HES); and the...

At 34%, Switzerland has the lowest home ownership rate in Western Europe. This is a puzzle given the economic strength of the country. We use 1998 household survey data for five Swiss cantons to explore some possible reasons for this. We estimate a tenure choice equation that allows us to...

Under tenancy rent control, rents are regulated within a tenancy but not between tenancies. This paper investigates the effects of tenancy rent control on housing quality and maintenance. Since the discounted revenue received over a fixed-duration tenancy depends only on the starting rent,...

An enormous increase of initial rents in many German cities over the last decade has prompted the current grand coalition to implement a new rent control called "Mietpreisbremse" in 2015 (literally a brake on rental prices). This reform aims to stop exploding rents and to provide particularly...

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...

Much of the nation has experienced steep declines in housing prices in recent years. In Manhattan, however, apartment sales prices did not fall as sharply. A study of price-rent ratios in the New York City borough concludes that, while apartment rents are driven by supply and demand forces,...

This paper examines urban residential location and rent determination within a city populated by consumers acting with perfect foresight. In this setting, the consumption and saving decisions of city residents are determined jointly with their choice of location, thereby offering an initial step...

Over the past two years, the cost of housing and community amenities has been growing at a moderate rate. Due to financial problems, one in every ten households delayed paying its bills, or paid them only in part. The volume of housing and community amenities payments in arrears remained the...

In light of the steep increase of home prices and rents in Israel in 2009-2010, we identified and quantified the macroeconomic variables that influenced these prices between 1999 and 2010. Estimating an error-correction model and a difference equation model, we found that the monetary interest...

Cities worldwide have regulated peer-to-peer short-term rental platforms claiming that those platforms remove apartments from the long-term housing market, causing an in- crease in rents. Establishing and quantifying such a causal link is, however, challenging. We investigate two policy changes...