Every year during the second and thirdquarters (the hot seasonʺ) housing markets in the UK and the US experience systematic above-trend increases in both prices and transactions. During the fourth and first quarters (the cold seasonʺ), house prices and transactions fall below trend. We propose...

The contribution of this paper is to offer a rationale for the observed seasonal pattern in house prices. We first document seasonality in house prices for the US and the UK using formal statistical tests and illustrate its quantitative importance. In the second part of the paper we employ a...