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on Housing and Real Estate |
| By: | Yusuf Emre Akgunduz; Muhammed Hamza Kayrici |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of the February 2023 Türkiye earthquakes on housing markets in unaffected regions using online real estate listings and a time-based Regression Discontinuity Design. We document a sharp post-disaster demand shock driven by large-scale population displacement, with effects concentrated in the residential rental market. Consistent with a residential displacement shock, no significant effects are detected in commercial property markets. Price increases were highly segmented: pressures were strongest for multi-room units, reflecting the larger family structures of displaced households, and for newly constructed units, indicating a post-disaster flight-to-safety. Cross-sectional province-level and difference-in-differences estimates show that pre-existing migration networks and geographic distance are the primary determinants of rental price pressures. |
| Keywords: | Natural disasters, Housing markets, Rental prices, Internal displacement, Migration networks, Regression discontinuity design |
| JEL: | C21 Q54 R21 R23 R31 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tcb:wpaper:2613 |
| By: | Adrian Fernandez-Perez (University College of Dublin); Marta Gómez-Puig (Universitat de Barcelona); Simón Sosvilla-Rivero (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) |
| Abstract: | This paper contributes to the literature on real estate market dynamics by analysing rental and sales price behaviour in Spain’s two largest cities —Madrid and Barcelona— between May 2007 and December 2024. Using monthly data from Idealista.com, Spain’s leading real estate platform, we detect episodes of explosive dynamics in both markets, examine their key determinants, and investigate contagion effects across cities and market segments. Our results show that, although relatively few episodes of price explosiveness occurred, they were of substantial duration. We also find evidence of contagion: explosive behaviour in rental markets precedes similar dynamics in sales prices, overall in recent years, highlighting the pivotal role of rental markets in driving housing price surges. Among the key determinants, a higher number of hotel stays is associated with a reduced probability of rapid housing price escalation, suggesting that more hotel-based tourists may help stabilise real estate markets in both cities. Additionally, rising interest rates are also linked to a lower risk of explosive episodes. In contrast, increasing resident numbers significantly raises the likelihood of a sharp housing price acceleration, whereas higher unemployment mitigates it. These findings offer critical insights for housing policy and market monitoring in major urban areas. Concretely, they suggest that housing policies should prioritise the rental market, not only because it impacts the most vulnerable groups, but also because pressures in the rental sector often extend into the sale market. On the other hand, policies that encourage the relocation of residents to areas with lower housing demand (e.g., improving the interurban transport network) or promote the issuance of housing certificates could help mitigate the risk of explosive housing price behaviour. |
| Keywords: | Explosive price dynamics, local projections, contagion, real estate markets |
| JEL: | R |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inf:wpaper:2026.03 |
| By: | Balouktsi Despoina (European Commission - JRC); Joossens Elisabeth (European Commission - JRC); Le Blanc Julia (European Commission - JRC); Martins Vitor |
| Abstract: | This Science-for-Policy brief provides details on the housing affordability crisis in Portugal. Portugal is one of the least affordable countries in the EU, with house prices surging 130% since 2013, especially in Lisbon, Porto, the Algarve, and coastal tourist areas. National aggregates hide significant regional differences, with usable housing stock often mismatched to high-demand areas. Around 12% of Portugal's housing stock is vacant, much of it requiring repairs, contrasting with scarcity in high-demand zones. Construction has not kept up with demand, pushing prices up despite new builds in high-demand areas. Detailed regional housing data is crucial for targeting policies to address scarcity and under-utilization effectively. The Mapadomo dataset offers annual time series on housing stocks and average residential prices at the NUTS3 level. |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc146516 |
| By: | James C. MacGee; Yuxi Yao |
| Abstract: | An economy with fixed-amortization mortgages and borrowing-constrained consumers leads to the non-superneutrality of money as the level of inflation targeted has real effects on home ownership, consumption, and debt. Higher trend inflation increases nominal interest rates, which increases nominal mortgage payments at origination and crowds out non-housing consumption by borrowing-constrained homeowners. Using a life-cycle housing tenure choice model where trend inflation proportionately shifts nominal income growth and interest rates, we show that by front-loading real mortgage payments, higher inflation lowers steady-state home ownership and the mortgage debt-to-income (DTI) ratio. After an unanticipated permanent change in trend inflation, such as the 1980s Volcker disinflation, it can take 20 years for home ownership and the DTI ratio to reach the new steady state. While refinancing of fixed-rate mortgages (FRMs) narrows the differences between economies with FRMs and those with adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) after a fall in inflation, the mortgage lock-in effect leads to a longer transition following an increase in inflation with FRMs than ARMs. In our calibrated economy, the fall in inflation from around 8% in the early 1980s to under 3% by 2000, combined with lower mortgage financing costs, can account for half of the rise in US mortgage debt between 1983 and 2001. |
| Keywords: | Financial system, Monetary policy, Inflation dynamics and pressures |
| JEL: | E21 E50 G51 R21 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bca:bocawp:26-1 |
| By: | Moaz Elsayed; Valère Fourel; Matthieu Segol |
| Abstract: | We develop a mesoeconometric framework to quantify the macroeconomic effects of policies that target household leverage. We focus on borrower-based macroprudential measures (BBMs), which regulate lending standards at loan origination. The approach first identifies lending standards shocks in a structural VAR-IV framework and then exploits heterogeneous borrower responses to BBMs to isolate the policy-induced component of those shocks. We apply this framework to France, where caps on debt-service-to-income (DSTI) ratios and loan maturities were introduced in 2019. We show that lending standards shocks have persistent and economically meaningful effects on housing and credit dynamics. By contrast, the BBM-induced component has statistically significant but economically moderate effects. In credit markets, the measure raises borrowing interest rates by around 0.15 to 0.20 percentage points and slows the growth of real outstanding housing credit by up to 0.8 percentage points between 2022 and 2023, a period during which outstanding credit fell by as much as 8%, mainly as a result of higher interest rates. The measure also reduces house price growth by 2 to 3 percentage points at its trough. We find no significant impact on real residential investment, household income, or real GDP. These results indicate that BBMs primarily affect the riskiest component of the housing credit market without generating broad macroeconomic spillovers, highlighting their role as targeted tools for enhancing financial resilience. |
| Keywords: | Macroprudential Policy, Lending Standards Shocks, Housing Market, Borrower-Based Measures |
| JEL: | E44 G21 G28 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bfr:banfra:1051 |
| By: | van Binsbergen, Jules; Cocco, João F.; Grotteria, Marco; Naaraayanan, Lakshmi |
| Abstract: | We quantify the impact of perceived cancer risk on housing values using widely advertised national reclassifications of chemical carcinogenicity in the United States. Combining these information events with an empirical design that compares changes in house values closer to affected toxic plants against those farther away isolates the effect of cancer risk news from other local factors. Focusing on plants previously emitting reclassified carcinogenic chemicals, we estimate a 1-2% decline in housing values within a 3-mile radius compared to those located farther away. The effects are stronger in areas with higher media presence underscoring the role of salience as a mechanism. |
| Keywords: | Salience; Real estate prices; Household finance |
| JEL: | G11 G50 Q51 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20512 |
| By: | Hedlund, Aaron; Larkin, Kieran; Mitman, Kurt; Ozkan, Serdar |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of mortgage market structures on shaping economic responses to the unprecedented interest rate and inflation dynamics of 2021-2024. We first empirically document that economies with a larger share of variable-rate mortgages exhibit stronger responses in house prices to monetary policy shocks. We then develop and calibrate a structural model of the housing market to demonstrate that these mortgage structures can account for a substantial portion of the divergent house price paths observed across the U.S., Canada, Sweden, and the U.K. during the Great Inflation. Our analysis reveals that early pandemic mortgage rate cuts drove 45% of the U.S. house price boom. Economies dominated by adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) show greater price sensitivity to monetary tightening, while fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) regimes exhibit more pronounced path dependence due to a lock-in effect. These dynamics have significant distributional consequences, with low-income homeowners benefiting most from the initial low-rate environment, especially in FRM regimes. Finally, we show that the preferred monetary tightening path is regime-dependent, as a policy counterfactual reveals that FRM-dominant economies benefit more from a shorter and sharper tightening schedule. |
| Keywords: | Housing; Mortgages; Inflation |
| JEL: | D31 E21 E52 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20364 |
| By: | Liu, Teng; Constantz, Brook; Hale, Galina; Beck, Michael |
| Abstract: | Measuring the financial value of nature is difficult, often resulting in insufficient funding directed to nature conservation and restoration. As coastal risks increase from development and climate change, a tangible benefit of nature is the protection it offers against storm damages. Many studies from the risk industry and others assess the direct effects of wetlands for reducing damage during storms. However, the value of wetlands for coastal protection could extend to many other benefits, including home prices in areas where storms are common. We use property-level housing transaction data from Zillow and show that proximity to mangroves in Florida moderates home price decline and dispersion following major hurricanes. The effects are substantial in magnitude, reducing the probability of losing a quarter or more of housing value by 2-7 percentage points, which corresponds to 20-40-thousand-dollar value for a million-dollar property, conditional on a hurricane. |
| Keywords: | climate |
| JEL: | Q54 G12 R31 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20684 |
| By: | Samuel Bícego (Department of Economics, University of São Paulo); André Luis Squarize Chagas (Department of Economics, University of São Paulo) |
| Abstract: | We examine how the price ceiling in Brazil’s Minha Casa Minha Vida program relates to the composition of new housing supply. Combining administrative records with dwelling-level launch data, we construct a continuous measure of similarity to projects contracted under the program. After 2009, supply below the applicable ceiling became substantially more concentrated in MCMV-oriented dwelling types, and this differential persisted across subsequent ceiling revisions. The pattern is robust to alternative score constructions and classification cutoffs. By contrast, the flatter score-price gradient below the ceiling predates the program. The evidence is consistent with supply reorganization toward the eligible segment. |
| Keywords: | Housing prices, Price ceilings, Housing subsidies, Market segmentation |
| JEL: | R21 R31 R38 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:nereus:023115 |
| By: | Kota Ogasawara |
| Abstract: | This study examines the impact of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake on population distribution within Tokyo City. The earthquake triggered massive fires that devastated nearly half of the city, including much of its urban core. To investigate its consequences, I digitized systematic census statistics and conducted regression analyses using variation in fire damage across areas. The results show that land readjustment implemented as part of the reconstruction project reduced residential land area within the burned area, leading to higher unit rents. Although the total residential floor area eventually recovered through the construction of multi-story dwellings, the population of the burned area remained below its pre-earthquake level throughout the period examined. In addition, the zoning system established before the earthquake had little effect on population redistribution. These findings suggest that post-disaster population distribution was shaped primarily by market-based price adjustments rather than institutional regulations. The analysis further shows that rising rents reduced the number of kinship households while increasing incentives for workers to rent rooms as lodgers. The rent burden borne by lodgers, relative to that borne by landlords, was lower in the burned area, making housing sharing an effective response. Overall, the post-disaster population decline in the burned area reflected the net effect of two opposing forces: population loss driven by rising rents and population retention through increased housing sharing among worker households seeking to mitigate those rent increases. |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2607.02978 |
| By: | D'Andrea, Angelo; Hitayezu, Patrick; Kpodar, Kangni; Limodio, Nicola; Presbitero, Andrea |
| Abstract: | Combining administrative data on credit, mortgages, and construction in Rwanda, this paper shows that technology helps overcome imperfections in property rights and foster the development of the mortgage market. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation in 3G internet coverage and a land title reform, we find that mobile connectivity shifts borrowers from microfinance to banks. 3G internet facilitates the distribution of land titles, which borrowers use as collateral for bank loans and mortgages, thus promoting household investment in real estate. A mediation analysis and structural estimation reveal that the property rights channel accounts for 30–37% of the effect of mobile internet on bank lending and 75–80% of the effect on collateralized loans. |
| Keywords: | Mortgage; Banks; Credit |
| JEL: | G21 G23 O33 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20746 |
| By: | Shaoming Cheng |
| Abstract: | Housing markets capitalize new information regarding future risks and ownership costs, yet little is known about how markets respond when sequential shocks differ fundamentally in nature. This study examines how Florida's condominium market capitalized two temporally adjacent but distinct shocks: the unexpected collapse of the Surfside condominium building, which revised perceptions of structural risk, and the subsequent enactment of Senate Bill 4-D (SB4D), which introduced mandatory milestone inspections, Structural Integrity Reserve Studies (SIRS), reserve funding requirements, and related compliance obligations that increased anticipated future ownership costs. Using more than one million condominium transactions across Florida between 2020 and 2024, the study employs a three-period difference-in-differences design, complemented by monthly event-study analyses, to distinguish the initial capitalization following the Surfside information shock from the subsequent capitalization observed after SB4D. Condominium sales prices declined significantly following the Surfside collapse and experienced an additional, statistically significant decline subsequent to SB4D. Monthly event-study estimates show two distinct phases of price adjustment corresponding closely to the sequential shocks. Heterogeneous analyses indicate that capitalization varied systematically across building age and condominium value but exhibited comparatively modest and less systematic variation across coastal proximity. The findings demonstrate that housing markets capitalize revised perceptions of future risk and anticipated future ownership costs through distinct economic channels. The magnitude of capitalization depends on the extent to which each sequential shock revises buyers' prior assessments, rather than on the underlying level of risk or ownership costs alone. |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2607.02791 |
| By: | Advay Ranade |
| Abstract: | The 2024 Department of Justice antitrust complaint against RealPage, Inc. named five major residential REITs for coordinating algorithmic rent pricing across hundreds of thousands of apartment units in major US metropolitan areas. This paper studies whether census-tract-level corporate landlord concentration (CLC), measured from SEC EDGAR 10-K property filings geocoded to census tracts, the first such application in the literature, is associated with rent growth 2019-2023, and whether that association is larger in majority-minority neighborhoods. Rent outcomes are measured using the Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI). To account for the possibility that corporate landlords preferentially locate in neighborhoods already seeing rent appreciation, all regressions control for a fully novel Algorithmic Housing Burden Index (AHBI), a composite of pre-existing rent burden and market tightness from ACS data. Across 665 census tracts in ten US metropolitan areas, doubling REIT concentration is associated with 2.8 percentage points higher rent growth (p = 0.086, p = 0.030, HC1 robust). This association is significantly stronger in majority-minority tracts. Within the same metro, high-CLC majority-minority tracts are associated with 5.9 percentage points higher rent growth than comparable white tracts (p = 0.039). An XGBoost model predicts 44 percent of out-of-sample rent growth variance, with SHAP analysis independently confirming that CLC's contribution is positive in minority tracts and negative in white tracts. Taken all together, these findings provide the first tract-level evidence consistent with corporate landlord concentration being associated with disproportionately higher rent growth in communities of color. |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2606.27525 |
| By: | Aastveit, Knut Are; Juelsrud, Ragnar; Getz Wold, Ella |
| Abstract: | We use Norwegian data on household balance sheets, housing transactions, and consumption to evaluate the impact of loan-to-value (LTV) regulation. We find that LTV caps do not only reduce leverage, but also liquidity. The negative liquidity effect is stronger for first time buyers and persistent. While average consumption remains unchanged, buyers subject to the cap reduce consumption more following income shocks, consistent with lower liquidity raising the marginal propensity to consume. This effect is concentrated in housing-related spending and is accompanied by a higher likelihood of downscaling, highlighting an unintended consequence of LTV regulation through reduced financial buffers. |
| Keywords: | Macroprudential policy; Mortgage markets; Leverage; Liquidity; Consumption |
| JEL: | E21 E58 G21 G28 G51 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20505 |
| By: | de Bromhead, Alan; Lyons, Ronan C.; Ohler, Johann |
| Abstract: | Poor housing conditions, and the negative effects of Household Air Pollution (HAP) in particular, remain one of the most pressing global public health challenges. While the association between poor housing and health has a long history, evidence of a direct link is lacking. In this paper, we examine a rare example of a public housing intervention in rural areas, namely the large-scale provision of high-quality housing in Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We exploit a novel dataset of deaths-by-disease and deaths-by-age-and-sex over the period 1871–1919, to test the impact of the intervention on mortality. Our difference-in difference estimates indicate that improved housing conditions reduced mortality by as much as 1 death per 1000. This effect is driven by reductions in deaths from respiratory diseases. We propose a likely mechanism that is consistent with the pattern of results we observe: a reduction in Household Air Pollution through improved housing quality and better ventilation. A cost-benefit analysis reveals that the scheme was a highly cost-effective intervention. |
| Keywords: | Ireland |
| JEL: | N33 N93 Q53 O18 I14 J10 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20725 |
| By: | Michael Boutros; Nuno Clara; Katya Kartashova |
| Abstract: | We study how households choose between three mortgage contracts with different payment structures: fixed-rate fixed-payment, variable-rate variable-payment, and a hybrid variable-rate fixed-payment mortgage where interest rate changes affect principal repayment rather than payment size. This hybrid contract, which is offered in only a few countries around the world, gives households additional flexibility to insure against payment risk while exposing them to the risk of larger future mortgage balances. We model these mortgage types simultaneously and show that welfare is substantially improved when all three contracts are available for households to choose from. Our calibrated model matches mortgage choice patterns in Canada, where all these options are offered with short terms. We demonstrate that restricting contract choice or mandating long terms, as in the U.S. system, can lead to substantial welfare losses by limiting risk management strategies and increasing mortgage pricing ex-ante. |
| Keywords: | Financial system, Financial institutions and intermediation, Household and business credit |
| JEL: | D14 G18 G21 G51 E21 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bca:bocawp:26-2 |