House Prices and Credit Constraints: Making Sense of the US Experience

Abstract

Most US house price models break down in the mid-2000s, due to the omission of exogenous changes in mortgage credit supply (associated with the sub-prime mortgage boom) from house price-to-rent ratio and inverted housing demand models. Previous models lack data on credit constraints facing first-time home-buyers. Incorporating a measure of credit conditions – the cyclically adjusted loan-to-value ratio for first-time buyers – into house price-to-rent ratio models yields stable long-run relationships, more precisely estimated effects, reasonable speeds of adjustment and improved model fits.