Empirical evidence of risk contagion across regional housing markets in China

Abstract

This study constructed regular vine copula models to investigate risk contagion across China's regional housing markets, which has recently garnered substantial attention in academic and practical domains. We utilised the Chinese monthly price indices of new commercial housing sales from 2006 to 2019. We found that the housing markets within the three primary Chinese urban agglomerations have tail dependencies, thereby implying the tendency for these markets to experience extreme market situations together. Therefore, these housing markets share risk contagion. Furthermore, China's four first-tier cities—Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen—drive regional market risk contagion. Market risk alternately diffuses across the adjacent major housing markets and expands from these first-tier cities to their surrounding areas. These findings suggest that risk contagion should be carefully considered in developing regulation policies and making investment decisions associated with China's real estate markets.