We infer the role of price expectations in forming the U.S. housing boom in the early-2000s from examining housing inventories. We use a reduced form model to show that agents invest in vacant homes when they anticipate prices will increase. Empirically, vacancy can discriminate between price...

We infer the role of price expectations in forming the U.S. housing boom in the early- 2000s from examining housing inventories. We use a reduced form model to show that agents invest in vacant homes when they anticipate prices will increase. Empirically, vacancy can discriminate between price...