The recent house price experiences within an individual's social network affect her perceptions of the attractiveness of property investments, and through this channel have large effects on her housing market activity. Our data combine anonymized social network information from Facebook with...

In 2008, the Swedish property tax was reformed and a cap on yearly tax liabilities was introduced. A large fraction of owner occupied houses was subject to a substantial decrease in the tax. When the reform was announced, most analysts projected - in line with tax capitalization theory - that...

Many goods are marketed after first stating a list price, with the expectation that the eventual sales price will differ. In this paper we first present a simple model of search behavior that includes the seller setting a list price. Holding constant the mean of the buyers' distribution of...

Equity stripping fraud often masquerades as a sale-leaseback contract. Homeowners anticipating a refinance to settle a foreclosure are victimized through a transfer of ownership and theft of equity. The doctrine of equitable mortgage is a legal theory used to challenge these fraudulent...

In this paper, I investigate the characteristics of house price dynamics for a sample of 16 emerging economies from Asia and Central and Eastern Europe, over the period 1995-2011. Linking housing valuations to a set of conventional fundamental determinants – relative to both the supply and the...

Today, roughly 60 percent of home loans are done through mortgage brokers, who negotiate their fees one-on-one with borrowers. Brokers have the advantage of experience and skill, plus information about wholesale terms that are unavailable to the borrowers. Borrowers can pay cash for all...

Hedonic valuation models have shown that sales prices can capitalize property risk factors, such as flood zone; properties facing lower risk sell at a premium, all else being equal. Previous research has indicated that price differentials reflecting risk of flooding become much larger in the wake...

Iran is an energy-rich country and one of the world's main oil-exporters, but its own rapid energy consumption in recent years has raised concerns about the ability of the country to continue exporting oil in the future. Economic growth, massive energy subsidies, and mismanagement of the energy...

Previous efforts exploring options to increase residential sector's energy efficiency have overlooked that highlighting co-benefits associated with energy efficiency may represent a promising strategy to draw attention from decision makers. For instance, in addition to savings in energy costs,...