House Price Appreciation Research Articles

House-Price Expectations, Alternative Mortgage Products, and Default

The goal of this paper is to better understand the forces that spurred use of alternative mortgages during the housing boom. A theoretical model shows that, when future house-price expectations become more favorable, reducing default concerns, mortgage choices shift toward alternative products, which are characterized by backloading of payments. The empirical work confirms this prediction by showing that an increase in past house-price appreciation, which captures more favorable expectations for the future, raises the market share of alternative mortgages. In addition, the paper tests the fundamental presumption that backloaded mortgages are more likely to default, finding support for this view.

Effectiveness and Channels of Macroprudential Instruments: Lessons from the Euro Area

The crisis has highlighted the importance of setting up macro-prudential oversight frameworks, having effective macro-prudential instruments in place to be called upon to mitigate growing financial imbalances as needed. We develop a new approach using the euro area Bank Lending Survey to assess the effectiveness of macro-prudential policies in containing credit growth and house price appreciation in mortgage markets. We find instruments targeting the cost of bank capital most effective in slowing down mortgage credit growth, and that the impact is transmitted mainly through price margins, the same banking channel as monetary policy. Limits on loan-to-value ratios are also effective, especially when monetary policy is excessively loose.

Macroprudential Measures and Housing Markets: A Note on the Empirical Literature

The global financial crisis has led to increased attention on the relationship of household indebtedness and systemic risks. As a result, macroprudential measures aimed at reducing the risks have been introduced in many countries. This note reviews the recent empirical literature on these measures focusing on the housing market. Thus far, the literature mostly consists of cross-country studies using aggregate data and looking at a large set of different measures. The studies typically report associations between the measures and outcome variables of interest (often credit growth and house price appreciation), but do not assess the causal effects of the different measures or the underlying mechanisms. Exploiting household level data together with policy reforms, should be a useful step forward in understanding the effects of the measures and uncovering the mechanisms through which they operate. Focusing on micro-data would also allow studying the distributional effects of the measures. Understanding the distributional effects is important in its own right, but also because the ultimate goals of the macroprudential policies are related not only to the aggregate level of credit but also to the distribution of leverage.

Discussion

Discussion

Effectiveness of Macroprudential Policies in Developing Asia: An Empirical Analysis

Before the 2008 global financial crisis, bank monitoring focused primarily on risks to individual institutions, or what are generally referred to as prudential risks. Regulators thus failed to consider that a buildup of macroeconomic risks and vulnerabilities could pose systemic risk to the financial sector. The global credit crisis showed the inadequacy of purely prudential surveillance systems and the need for bank supervisors to better detect the buildup of macroeconomic risks before they can threaten the financial system. This article presents an empirical framework for analyzing how effectively macroprudential policies control credit growth, leverage growth, and housing price appreciation. Two significant findings emerge. Broadly, macroprudential policies can indeed promote financial stability in Asia. More specifically, different types of macroprudential policies are proved effective for different types of macroeconomic risks.

Total Returns to Single Family Rentals

The market value of US Single Family Rental assets totals more than $2.3 trillion. We believe that we provide the first systematic analysis of total returns to Single Family Rentals over a long time period, in a broad and granular cross section. We find that total nominal returns are approximately equalized across US cities, at about 8.5%, the same order of magnitude as equity returns. On average, net rental yields and house price appreciation have each contributed around half of the 8.5% total return. However, these two components are negatively correlated in the cross section. High price tier cities accrued more capital gains, while low price tier cities had higher net rental yields. Within cities, we show that lower-price-tier zip codes have higher total returns as a result of both higher yields and higher house price appreciation.

Misinformed Speculators and Mispricing in the Housing Market

This paper examines the contribution of out-of-town second-house buyers to mispricing in the housing market. We show that demand from out-of-town second-house buyers during the mid 2000s predicted not only house-price appreciation rates but also implied-to-actual-rent-ratio appreciation rates, a proxy for mispricing. We then apply a novel identification strategy to address the issue of reverse causality. We give supporting evidence that out-of-town second-house buyers behaved like misinformed speculators, earning lower capital gains (misinformed) and consuming smaller dividends (speculators).

Investor Confidence as a Determinant of China's Urban Housing Market Dynamics

China's urban housing market dynamics suggest that evolving investor confidence may be a relevant demand shifter. Such investors are continually updating their beliefs about the state of the macroeconomy and the policy uncertainty related to national and local housing policies. We build a 35 Chinese city real estate confidence index that varies over time and across cities. This index predicts subsequent house price appreciation and new housing sales. We document evidence of heterogeneous effects of investor confidence depending on a city's demographics and the city's elasticity of housing supply. Our results based on a new household‐level expectations survey bolster the case that investor expectations are an important determinant of real estate price dynamics.

Is Timing Everything? Race, Homeownership and Net Worth in the Tumultuous 2000s

We use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to estimate how net worth was affected among low‐ and moderate‐income households who became first‐time homebuyers at different points during the volatile 2000s. We address selection using propensity score matching and estimating difference‐in‐difference models, and use quantile regressions to account for the skew in net worth outcomes. Results highlight the significance of race in the relationship between first‐time home buying and net worth during the decade. Although timing was critical to the short‐term trajectory of net worth for whites, total net worth declines for black first‐time homebuyers regardless of economic climate. The most dramatic differences between black and white new homebuyers is their neighborhood locations, with blacks purchasing in predominantly black neighborhoods with lower housing prices and price appreciation, and lower and declining rates of homeownership.

Variations in the Implicit Pricing of Energy Performance by Dwelling Type and Tenure: A Study of Wales

This paper investigates the price effect of EPC ratings on the residential dwelling prices in Wales. It examines the capitalisation of energy efficiency ratings into house prices using two approaches. The first adopts a cross-sectional framework to investigate the effect of EPC band (and EPC rating) on a large sample of dwelling transactions. The second approach is based on a repeat-sales methodology to examine the impact of EPC band and rating on house price appreciation. The results show that, controlling for other price influencing dwelling characteristics, EPC band does affect house prices. This observed influence of EPC on price may not be a result of energy performance alone; the effect may be due to non-energy related benefits associated with certain types, specifications and ages of dwellings or there may be unobserved quality differences unrelated to energy performance such as better quality fittings and materials. An analysis of the private rental segment reveals that, in contrast to the general market, low-EPC rated properties were not traded at a significant discount. This suggests a lower implicit price for energy efficiency when the owner is not responsible for covering the cost of energy in a dwelling.

The Spillover Effect of Urban Village Removal on Nearby Home Values in Beijing

AbstractAn urban village is a typical type of informal housing settlement in which rural migrants stay in Chinese cities. As urban villages are being woven into modern urban landscapes, we estimate the size of their negative externality and also the positive spillover effect of their removal on nearby formal housing communities. We employ two micro data sets: one includes all the existing urban villages in 2006 and a unique micro survey of 50 villages conducted in 2008, and the other contains 24,000 micro resale records in the formal housing sector from 2006 to 2011. Our findings show that an average urban village causes a 2.5 percent housing price discount in nearby communities, and the removal of this urban village triggers a 3.3–4.3 percent housing price appreciation. However, more careful consideration is needed for the other side of the coin—the welfare change of those rural migrants who are displaced during this process.

Who Benefits from Environmental Regulation? Evidence from the Clean Air Act Amendments

Abstract Using geographically disaggregated data and exploiting an instrumental variable strategy, we show that contrary to conventional wisdom, the benefits of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) were progressive. The CAAA created incentives for local regulators to target the initially dirtiest areas for cleanup, creating heterogeneity in the incidence of air quality improvements that favored lower-income households. Based on house price appreciation, households in the lowest quintile of the income distribution received annual benefits from the program equal to 0.3% of their income on average during the 1990s, over twice as much as those in the highest quintile.

The rising demand for subway after private driving restriction: Evidence from Beijing's housing market

This paper studies to what extent subway demand increased after the Beijing city government imposed restrictions on private driving in October, 2008. Utilizing a pseudo-repeat sale approach in a short sample period that includes 6months before and after this exogenous shock, we mitigate the omitted variables problem, a common limitation in existing subway capitalization studies. We estimate the incremental effect of subway capitalization, and infer a 1.8 to 2.7 percentage point increase in people's willingness to pay for subway proximity, which is roughly 36% to 60% of the initial price premium for subway proximity. This increase is mainly due to the change in transportation mode following the driving restriction policy. We also find that the increase in demand for subway proximity exhibits significant spatial heterogeneity. Locations where subway travel time can better match that of car travel experience relatively higher housing price appreciation. Moreover, we find evidence that the increase in subway premium persists over time. Our estimation provides a basis for a sound cost–benefit analysis regarding how much and where the government should increase the supply of subway services after imposing restrictions on private driving.

Demystifying the Chinese Housing Boom

We construct housing price indices for 120 major cities in China in 2003-2013 based on sequential sales of new homes within the same housing developments. By using these indices and detailed information on mortgage borrowers across these cities, we find enormous housing price appreciation during the decade, which was accompanied by equally impressive growth in household income, except in a few first-tier cities. While bottom-income mortgage borrowers endured severe financial burdens by using price-to-income ratios over eight to buy homes, their participation in the housing market remained steady and their mortgage loans were protected by down payments commonly in excess of 35 percent. As such, the housing market is unlikely to trigger an imminent financial crisis in China, even though it may crash with a sudden stop in the Chinese economy and act as an amplifier of the initial shock.

House Price Booms, Current Account Deficits, and Low Interest Rates

One of the most striking features of the period before the Great Recession is the strong positive correlation between house price appreciation and current account deficits, not only in the United States but also in other countries that have subsequently experienced the highest degree of financial turmoil. A progressive relaxation of credit standards can rationalize this empirical observation. Lower collateral requirements facilitate access to external funding and drive up house prices. The current account turns negative because households borrow from the rest of the world. At the same time, however, the world real interest rate counterfactually increases. The two key ingredients that reconcile a demand-based explanation of house price booms and current account deficits with the evidence on real interest rates are nominal interest rates lower than the predictions of a standard monetary policy rule in leveraged economies and foreign exchange rate pegs in saving countries.

Explaining House Price Dynamics: Isolating the Role of Nonfundamentals

This paper examines the role of nonfundamentals‐based sentiment in house price dynamics, including the well‐documented volatility and persistence of house prices during booms and busts. To measure and isolate sentiment's effect, we employ survey‐based indicators that proxy for the sentiment of three major agents in housing markets: home buyers (demand side), home builders (supply side), and lenders (credit suppliers). After orthogonalizing each sentiment measure against a broad set of fundamental variables, we find strong and consistent evidence that the changing sentiment of all three sets of market participants predicts house price appreciation in subsequent quarters, above and beyond the impact of changes in lagged price changes, fundamentals, and market liquidity. More specifically, a one‐standard‐deviation shock to market sentiment is associated with a 32–57 basis point increase in real house price appreciation over the next two quarters. These price effects are large relative to the average real price appreciation of 71 basis points per quarter observed over the full sample period. Moreover, housing market sentiment and its effect on real house prices is highly persistent. The results also reveal that the dynamic relation between sentiment and house prices can create feedback effects that contribute to the persistence typically observed in house price movements during boom and bust cycles.

Bubble or riddle? An asset-pricing approach evaluation on China's housing market

Rapid house price growth and high price-to-income ratio in major Chinese cities have aroused a hot debate on whether there is an asset bubble in China's residential housing market. To investigate this question, we employ an equilibrium asset-pricing approach, which suggests a non-arbitrage condition on the rent-to-price ratio. This ratio should be equal to the difference between the user cost of housing capital and the expected appreciation in house prices. Using a novel micro-level data set on pair-wise matched price-to-rent ratio collected in the fourth quarter of 2013, and forecasting the expected house price appreciation based on fundamental factors, our empirical exercises do not suggest the existence of a house price bubble at the national level. However, this conclusion highly depends on the expected income growth rate and may not apply to individual markets.

Testing the Dividend Pricing Hypothesis in Housing Markets: The Role of Risk

Tests of the dividend pricing hypothesis (DPH) applied to housing have stud- ied the trade-obetween the capitalization rate (CAP rate) and subsequent house price appreciation. Even allowing for the fact that actual appreciation does not equal expected appreciation, evidence for the DPH is not strong. This research has included an implicit assumption that risks associated with housing investment are common across housing markets. In addition, many previous tests have used the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Rental Index to construct the CAP rate although recent research by Ambrose, Coulson and Yoshida (2013) has questioned this data. We use the American Housing Survey to construct estimates of the CAP rate which is then combined with standard appreciation measures to estimate total return and its variance over time for larger U.S. MSAs. Adding risk measures to a test of the DPH produces results consistent with the DPH. However, when the BLS Rent Index is used to measure CAP rates and risk, the results are not consistent with DPH. Overall, it appears that using statistically constructed estimates of the CAP rate and adding variance in total return to tests of the DPH produces far stronger results than those obtained in previous studies.

Subprime Mortgages and Housing Price Variations in the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area

Over the past decade, both the housing market and the subprime mortgage market in the United States experienced a rise and fall. To explore whether subprime lending has increased or decreased social inequality between subprime neighborhoods and nonsubprime neighborhoods, this article examines the relationship between subprime mortgages and housing price variations within the Philadelphia Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), using a global, ordinary least squares (OLS) method and a local, geographically weighted regression (GWR) method. The results show that neighborhoods obtaining disproportionate numbers of subprime mortgages enjoyed lower housing price appreciation rates than other neighborhoods during the housing boom era but suffered higher housing price depreciation rates during the housing bust era, after controlling for other variables. The results also show that the association between housing price variations and explanatory variables differs across geographic submarkets. The empirical evidence draws some policy implications, such as rethinking the homeownership policy through expanding subprime lending, as well as promoting place-based housing policymaking. Combining OLS and GWR, this article improves the understanding of how subprime lending exacerbated social inequality at the neighborhood level.

International Real Estate Review

In this research, we compare the effect of aggregate U.S. financial wealth with the effect of aggregate U.S. labor income on house prices at the national and city levels. Financial wealth is measured by the net worth of U.S. households minus the equity of owners in home real estate or by the aggregate U.S. stock market index. After adjusting for the volatility of each explanatory variable, we find the economic impact of growth in financial wealth on the aggregate U.S. house price appreciation to be statistically significant and similar to that of labor income growth. We also find a significant wealth effect on some of the city-level house price appreciations. For the cities where both wealth and income effects are significant, the economic impacts of the two effects are found to be similar. While labor income growth has a contemporaneous effect on the house price appreciation, change in financial wealth, and in particular, the stock market, leads house price appreciation but not vice versa.