Housing is an important sector of the economy. It has widespread implications for investment, banking, saving and employment. Home ownership has been linked to building social capital and a sense of community. Furthermore housing equity is a significant element of retirement accumulation for...

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...

The main aim of this paper is to identify the underlying reasons for the cyclical nature of the Hungarian housing market, in particular the business cycles, the construction, and market participants' expectations. Our research was conducted based on analysis of statistical data and of the...

Cross-country differences in homeownership rates are large and persistent over time, with homeownership rates ranging from 40% in Switzerland to 80% in Spain. This paper investigates whether culture is a driving factor of the homeownership decision, and could thus explain part of the...

In den Großstädten hat sich die Lage am Wohnungsmarkt derart zugespitzt, dass auch unkonventionelle Lösungen angestrebt werden. Der Anteil der Mietkosten am Einkommen der Stadtbevölkerung wächst und es wird schwieriger, sich eine angemessene Wohnung in der Stadt zu leisten. Vor allem die...

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...

The objective of this article is to understand the main socioeconomic determinants of family cohabitation and new household formation by young adults in Brazilian urban areas. Methodologically, the study adapts the models of De Vos (1989) and Granado and Castillo (2002) to the Brazilian case,...

This paper investigates the development of house prices in Copenhagen in the period 1994-2013, while paying special attention to the heterogeneous impact of the boom and bust periods along the dimensions of housing type (single vs multifamily housing), geography and quality. To allow for price...

This paper analyzes the impact of the sale of rental housing in Amsterdam on the local housing market. This increases the supply of owner-occupied housing, but can also contribute to gentrification associated with the inflow of different household groups. Earlier literature focused on the former...