Analysis of the filtering process and the ripple effect on the primary and secondary housing market in Warsaw, Poland

Abstract

The evolution of prices on the Warsaw (Poland) housing market was analyzed to identify the main drivers of market development. Newly developed housing and the existing housing stock were analyzed separatelywith a division into small, medium and large apartments (first stage of research). The macro-districts of the city of Warsaw were taken into account in the analysis (second stage of research). Complete data regarding individual transactions were not available; therefore, the analysis relied on changes in house prices in macro-districts between 2010Q1 and 2016Q4. In general, Poland still has a housing shortage, which is also visible in the capital city. Granger causality tests were performed to provide evidence for the filtering process and the ripple effect in selected market segment pairs. An increase in the prices of small apartments on the secondary market led to an increase in the prices of newly built medium-sized apartments. A similar correlation was noted between the prices of medium-sized apartments on the secondary market and the prices of newly built large apartments. The increase in housing prices in the city center tended to spill over to selected macro-districts. Our findings were confirmed by the vector autoregressive (VAR) model.