With house prices often below the face value of mortgages these days, the expected return on many mortgages has tumbled …

to reduce prices generates faster sales and hence improves social welfare, the usual commission rate of 6 percent exceeds …

Real estate prices in a local market can be driven by an identifiable group of purchasers. In Hawaii, residents of both … the U.S. mainland and Japan have been significant purchasers of homes. An analysis suggests that house prices in Hawaii … economy” in the late 1980s and immediately thereafter, house prices in Hawaii were driven primarily by demand from Japan. …

We show that house prices may be driven entirely by the demands of one identifiable group for several years and then by … demands of another group at other times. We present evidence that house prices in Hawaii were subject to such regime shifts …. Prices responded to demands associated with American income and wealth for most years from 1975 through 2008. From the middle …

time. Many economists, skeptical that a bubble existed, attempted to justify the historic run-up in housing prices based on … geography were particularly "bubble-prone," yet the data shows that the cities with the biggest gyrations in house prices were … guidance as to what should be the "correct" level of asset prices -- including housing prices. Thus, while optimistic forecasts …