• The rise in total upfront cash requirement has become the main obstacle to homeownership in Germany. Between 2015 and 2024, the average household needed a median of 9.37 years to save the necessary funds for a home purchase. • A substantial share of this burden comes not from the price...

The EU member states of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) experienced strong house price growth, on average, in the second and third quarter of 2025. A key contributing factor was the stable macroeconomic environment, particularly the strong performance of the labor market, which...

This paper examines the evolution of the Portuguese residential real estate market during the first twenty-five years of the 21st century, focusing on the short-run determinants of housing transaction values. Using quarterly data from 2000 to 2025, the study applies an econometric time-series...

Housing is the largest capital asset for most families. While the intergenerational mobility literature has extensively studied the income distribution, it has devoted less attention to housing, in part due to data limitations. We document 3 features of intergenerational mobility by comparing...

We study a German policy intervention that shifted the statutory incidence of real estate agent commissions from buyers to sellers. Liability-side equivalence predicts no effect on economic incidence as sellers are expected to pass on the additional burden through higher prices. We use real...

Der vorliegende IW-Wohnindex untersucht die Entwicklung der Kauf- und Mietpreise für Wohnimmobilien in Deutschland. Der vierteljährig erscheinende Kurzreport präsentiert die Ergebnisse eines hedonischen Preisindex auf der Basis von mehreren Millionen Wohnimmobilieninseraten. Betrachtet werden...

We document a novel transmission channel of monetary policy through the homeowners insurance market. On average, contractionary monetary policy shocks result in higher homeowners insurance prices. Using granular data on insurers' balance sheets, we show that this effect is driven by the...

Over the past 150 years, living space consumption has increased significantly-in Germany from less than half a room to almost two rooms per capita. The average living space per person more than doubled between 1956 and 2024, reaching 49.2 square meters. Rising incomes enabled the construction of...

This paper examines the relationship between location, liquidity, and prices in housing markets. We construct spatial datasets for German and U.S. cities and show that liquidity and prices decline with distance to the city center. To rationalize these results, we build a structural model with...

This chapter presents an overview of the social housing system in Germany. Unlike in many other contexts, social housing in Germany is conceived as a temporary, marketcorrecting policy; therefore, the social housing function is limited in time. While partially provided by the state, it is...

This chapter examines how Portugal's housing policy has evolved over recent decades and how this trajectory has shaped the current housing crisis. It explores how core policy concepts - such as social and affordable housing - have been defined and implemented, revealing the logic and limits of...

The Serbian case illustrates the complex interplay between post-socialist transformations, market liberalisation, and the retreat of the state from housing provision. Despite a comprehensive legal framework, social housing (redefined in 2016 as "housing support") remains marginal, representing...

Die Studie beleuchtet das Zusammenspiel von Migration und Wohnungsmarkt in Deutschland und verbindet eine Bestandsaufnahme zentraler Markttrends mit einer empirischen Auswertung repräsentativer Haushaltsdaten (SOEP). Ausgangspunkt ist ein Markt, der sich seit den 2010er-Jahren von langen Phasen...

Mit drei zentralen Anpassungen haben der Bundestag sowie der Bundesrat die Architektur der Staatsfinanzen grundlegend verändert. Über die 21. Legislaturperiode hinaus werden der kommenden und den nachfolgenden Bundesregierungen fiskalische Handlungsspielräume eröffnet, um die erforderlichen...

Over the past decade, the housing market in the EU has been characterised by significant price growth, putting pressure on housing affordability. Despite a price moderation in 2022 and 2023 due to monetary tightening and increased mortgage interest rates, house prices remain historically high in...

This paper examines the relation between location, liquidity, and prices in urban housing markets. We build geospatial datasets for German and U.S. cities and show that housing liquidity and prices jointly decrease with distance to the city center. Using transaction-level data, we estimate a...

This study explores the European Union's role in Europe's housing crisis. While much attention has been given to the EU's impact on other welfare state sectors, housing remains underexplored. Using Aalbers' theory of housing financialisation and Scharpf's theory of positive and negative EU...

Homeownership rates and holdings of housing wealth differ immensely across countries. We specify and estimate a life cycle model with risky labor income and house prices in which households face a discrete-continuous choice between renting and owning a house, whose sale is subject to transaction...

We document a novel transmission channel of monetary policy through the homeowners insurance market. On average, contractionary monetary policy shocks result in higher homeowners insurance prices. Using granular data on insurers' balance sheets, we show that this effect is driven by the...

This paper studies how dynamic changes in the search environment affect consumer search and purchase behavior. We develop a dynamic model that incorporates a non-stationary search environment and propose a feasible estimation procedure to estimate its parameters. We apply our model and...

Housing expenditure shares decline with income. A household's income determines its sensitivity to housing costs and drives its location decision. Has spatial skill sorting increased because low income individuals are avoiding increasingly expensive regions? I augment a standard quantitative...

Hidden “junk” fees have the potential to distort competition, creating high costs to consumers. However, regulating them can lead to adverse effects, especially in complex markets with intermediaries where they are most prevalent. To explore the equilibrium adjustments of regulating hidden...

Homeownership rates and holdings of housing wealth differ immensely across countries. Using micro data from five economies, we estimate a life-cycle model with illiquid housing in which households face a discrete-continuous choice between renting and owning a house. We use the model to decompose...