The boom and subsequent bust in housing construction and prices over the 2000s is widely regarded as a principal contributor to the Financial Panic of 2007 and the subsequent Great Recession. As of this writing, housing market activity remains at depressed levels as the economy slowly resolves...

In 1980, housing prices in the main US cities rose with distance to the city center. By 2010, that relationship had reversed. We propose that this development can be traced to greater labor supply of high-income households through reduced tolerance for commuting. In a tract-level data set...

This paper explores determinants of manufactured housing park (MHP) plot rents in North Carolina, with particular focus on the distinction among urban, rural, and periurban and small town parks, and on the possible role played by zoning restrictiveness. Little is known about how MHP rents are...

This paper assesses the predictive power of variables that measure market tightness, such as seller's bargaining power and sale probabilities, on future home prices. Theoretical insights from a stylized search-and-matching model illustrate that such indicators can be associated with subsequent...

The number 8, pronounced like 'prosperity,' is lucky in Chinese culture; 4, pronounced like 'death' is unlucky. Superstitious beliefs may influence asset prices if transaction participants have cultural preferences for specific numbers. We analyze the relationship between the presence of 8s and...

I examine racial bias in the most popular home valuation algorithm and study the algorithm's impact on racial bias in transaction prices. I find statistically significant but economically small racial bias in the algorithm. For example, while Black buyers overpay by 9.3% in prices relative to...

Housing prices, like the prices of other speculative assets, contain a mix of both small and large changes (i.e., jumps). We apply a jump-GARCH model to monthly Case-Shiller housing price indexes of twenty cities in the U.S. during the period January 1991 through December 2011. We document the...

This study investigates whether the unprecedented liquidity injected in the economy by the U.S Fed through unconventional monetary policy measure, popularly known as quantitative easing (QE), is a systematic factor that can explain the abnormally low U.S. housing starts of recent years. We use...

This paper is about investigating how different bank liquidity creation activities affect housing markets. Using data of 401 metropolitan statistical areas/divisions (MSAs/MSADs) of the US between 1990 and 2018, we show that not all bank liquidity creation activities boost housing markets. In...

Analyzing city-level retail price data for a variety of consumer products, we find that house price changes lead local consumer price changes, but not vice versa. The transmission of the house price changes differs substantially across locations and products. It also hinges on the nature of...