The main objective of this paper is to give an overview of the most commonly used housing policies and to illustrate their economic impact. To facilitate the analysis, we first introduce a simple two-period housing demand model for owner-occupied houses and rental houses. We then add a standard...

Social segregation in cities takes place where different household groups exist and when, according to Schelling, their location choice either minimizes the number of differing households in their neighbourhood or maximizes their own group. In this contribution an evolutionary simulation based...

This paper presents a model for the evaluation of environmental and urban improvements on the islands of the Venetian lagoon. The model simulates the changes in residential real estate values using a value function integrated in a geographical database which provides spatial distributions of...

The housing market is one of the most important markets in any economy, constituting typically both the most important class of consumption good and the most widely held investment asset. The origin of the Great Recession in the U.S. housing market has shown the importance of linkages between...

This chapter considers the structure of mortgage finance in the U.S., and its role in shaping patterns of homeownership, the nature of the housing stock, and the organization of residential activity. We start by providing some background on the design features of mortgage contracts that...

In this paper, the authors construct a unique data set of Internet offer prices for flats in 48 large European cities across 24 countries. The data collected between January and May 2012 from 33 websites, are drawn from Internet advertisements of dwellings. Using the resulting sample of more...

Die ost- und westdeutschen Wohnungsmärkte haben sich in den letzten 25 Jahren seit der Wiedervereinigung enorm gewandelt. Insbesondere Ostdeutschland erlebte einen deutlichen Aufholprozess, der sich in zentralen immobilienökonomischen Kennzahlen wie den Mieten, den Immobilienpreisen, dem...

The "Minha Casa Minha Vida" program (MCMV) started in 2009 and was afterwards elevated to the status of Brazilian housing policy. Since its creation the appearance of other alternatives for housing provision has been restricted. This paper performs a diagnosis of the recent housing policy in...

São Paulo's metropolitan area is one of the largest urban spaces in the world. As it ha ppens with any other large metropolitan area, understanding its structure, problems and dynamics is not a simple task. The structure of cities has been studied by urban economics ever since von Thünen's...