Analysis of Factors Affecting the Dynamics of Residential Real Estate Prices in Russia

Abstract

In this paper, we have constructed a VAR model to identify and assess the impact of real interest rate shocks, real estate demand, oil prices, uncertainty, and aggregate business activity on residential real estate prices in Russia. The relevance of the research is due to the following: the dynamics of real estate prices determines the consumer and investment behavior of households, and serious fluctuations in real estate prices lead to adverse consequences in many areas of life, so more and more researchers are asking questions about the presence of bubbles in the real estate market, which can be dangerous to the stability of the economy. In addition, a sharp increase in the cost of housing in Russia in 2020 is an open question for researchers. Our goal is to determine what factors caused the rise in real estate prices in Russia in the time interval from the Q1 of 2000 to the Q2 of 2022. A VAR model with a Cholesky decomposition was used for the evaluation. Several specifications were considered with the inclusion of the real oil price as an exogenous variable and a set of endogenous variables: real GDP, real interest rate, uncertainty index and housing price index. The main conclusion of the paper is that the housing market is sensitive to identified macroeconomic shocks, and a decrease in the interest rate leads to an increase in demand and real estate prices. The estimate of the long-term elasticity of housing prices for oil prices was 0.35, the dynamics of oil prices explained a significant proportion of the variation in real estate prices, but the predominant role in housing price fluctuations is given to housing demand shocks. The housing demand shocks in Russia itself had a negligible impact on GDP.