Research in real estate finance and economics has been dealing with the topic of efficiency in the U.S. housing market for over 25 years. However, most recent research either examines local markets based on single homes or focuses on the Conventional Mortgage Home Price Indices (CMPHI) and...

Real estate prices more than doubled in many countries of Central and Eastern Europe from 2003 to 2008. In this paper, I provide the first assessment of whether housing prices in this region correspond to rents, i.e. to cash-flows related to an apartment purchase. State-of-the art panel data...

We estimate the optimal tax on property flips by applying a sufficient statistics approach to a 2011 reform in Taiwan which levied a 10%-15% surcharge on investment properties sold within two years. Linking buyer-seller income tax returns to sales records, we find a 75% drop in one-year flips....

House prices in many industrial countries increased dramatically in the years prior to 2007. Countries with the largest increases in household debt relative to income experienced the fastest run-ups in house prices over the same period. During the run-up, many economists and policymakers...

We find that housing return volatility is negatively correlated with income at the zip-code level. We rationalize this finding with a model featuring a collateral constraint that translates income volatility to housing return volatility. Collateral constraints are tighter for lower-income areas,...

We propose an Economic Stability Index (ESI) incorporating house prices and stock prices as components of the measure of the inflation rate in order to allow the European Central Bank (ECB) to achieve both price and macroeconomic stability. We use an optimisation approach to estimate target...

Can inflation cure mortgage debt overhang and mitigate the severity of housing busts? Focusing on the Great Recession, I address this question through the lens of a quantitative macroeconomic model of illiquid housing, endogenous mortgage pricing, and equilibrium default. First, I show that an...

This paper quantitatively accounts for the cyclical dynamics of key macroeconomic housing and mortgage market variables using a tractable, search-theoretic model of housing with equilibrium mortgage default. To explain these dynamics, the model highlights the importance of liquidity spirals...

We analyze the effects of a lump sum deposit of a lease contract on residential property returns. According to our pricing model, property returns increase with the deposit to price ratio when interest rate is larger than dwelling benefits. When interest rate becomes lower than the dwelling...