In this paper I study unit-level data on house prices and rents in Central London. I document the existence of systematic differences in price-rent ratios across property types within the same urban area: bigger properties and properties located in more expensive neighborhoods have higher...

The question of whether the housing market is efficient or not is posed by an increasing number of economists, policymakers, current homeowners and prospective homebuyers. This article tests the efficiency hypothesis on data from the Norwegian housing market in its capital, Oslo. We employ the...

Abstract:We develop a model of the housing market that features both financial and matching frictions. In the model, risk-averse households may save or borrow in order to smooth consumption over time and finance owner housing. Each household either rents or owns its house. Some renter households...

The recent increase in house prices across the OECD highlights again the importance of understanding the different determinants of residential property demand. Sustained activity in housing markets across a number of countries was one of the contributing factors to the financial sector...

An understanding of the house price to rent ratio and its determinants is important in assessing housing market developments and tenure choice therein. While the ratio is most usually explained by the user cost of capital, the influence of credit conditions on it has been added to econometric...

The housing market is both large and complex. This paper develops a simple model that captures the essential features of the supply and demand for housing, and which is used to evaluate the impact of a range of policy interventions. Increases in the stock of housing would reduce rents and house...

Housing affordability has been a topic of much interest in New Zealand over recent years with the median house price increasing by over 50% between 2004 and 2008. The aim of this paper is to inform debate by drawing out evidence from two surveys: the Household Economic Survey (HES); and the...

This paper studies the role of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) in the US housing boom-bust cycle. I find that the enhancement in CRA enforcement in 1998 increased the growth rate of mortgage lending by CRA-regulated banks to CRA-eligible census tracts. I show that during the boom period...

What are the economic effects of a central bank that takes the evolution of house prices into account? In an attempt to answer this question, we use a New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with a housing sector to explore the economic impacts of a central bank reacting to...

We study how a household borrowing constraint the the form of a down payment requirement affects house price dynamics in an OLG model with standard preferences. We find that in certain situations the borrowing constraint shapes house price dynamics substantially. The importance of the constraint...