In this paper, we investigate whether evidence of discriminatory treatment against immigrants in the Spanish mortgage market exists. More specifically, we test whether, ceteris paribus, immigrant borrowers tend to be charged with higher interest rates on their mortgages than their Spanish born...

In 2001, the AZF plant exploded in Toulouse (France). The accident was unexpected, it strongly damaged local housing and benefited from a wide media coverage. It provides a rare opportunity to analyze the consequences of a shift in risk perception on housing markets and neighborhoods subject to...

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...

We use detailed information on all real estate stock and transactions since 2006 to study housing inequality in Belgium and how a recent policy shaped it. We use the transactions to predict the market value of all dwellings in the country, to then estimate inequality in value or space at...

This paper uses a simple model based on the board game Monopoly to analyze the drivers of house prices and wealth inequality. Simulations show that inequality generally builds up fast even if players have equal starting conditions and house prices are stable; rising house prices imply more...

There is empirical evidence that households use residential houses as status goods. In particular, people are shown to compare their houses with those at the top of the distribution. In this paper, we introduce a residential housing sector and status concerns for housing into a neoclassical...

Living conditions in the rural area are precarious in Romania, our country being at the bottom of the European ranking, and the situation is getting worse as the degree of isolation increases (mainly in the hilly and mountain areas) combined with the precariousness of livelihood resources in...

This paper provides a model for the well-known empirical phenomenon that houses of different quality experience different price developments. The typical pattern is that luxury houses appreciate more in boom periods and depreciate more during busts. The standard model of housing demand treats...

We estimate the effect of the UK Stamp Duty Land Tax on household mobility using micro data. The UK (until 2014) provided an ideal setting to explore the impact of housing transfer taxes on mobility decisions. This is partly because the stamp duty liability is quite substantial, at least for...

Despite large-scale governmental efforts to combat homelessness, homelessness rates can only be reduced but not eliminated completely by the measures usually applied. Hence, there is an obvious need to investigate additional factors which contribute to homelessness and gain insights on how to...