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on Housing and Real Estate |
| By: | Konstantin A. Kholodilin; Michael Voigtländer |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the causal effect of Germany’s second-generation rent control policy — the Mietpreisbremse (rental brake) — on residential housing construction. Using administrative data covering nearly 11, 000 German municipalities from 2010 to 2024, we employ staggered difference-in-differences estimators to address methodological biases of conventional two-way fixed effects models in settings with staggered treatment adoption. Our analysis examines multiple outcomes: total housing completions, completions of dwellings in multi-family houses (a proxy for rental housing supply), completions per capita, and net completions per housing stock. Results show that the rental brake has a statistically significant negative impact on housing construction, with stronger effects for multi-family dwellings. These findings remain robust to excluding major metropolitan areas, smaller municipalities, and municipalities with high homeownership rates, and persist even when the analysis is restricted to neighboring municipalities. This study contributes to the international literature on rent regulation by providing causal evidence from Germany’s staggered policy rollout, suggesting that even second-generation rent controls — which explicitly exempt new construction — can dampen housing supply. This likely occurs through increased regulatory uncertainty, higher risk premia demanded by investors, and reduced rental revenues available to finance residential investment. |
| Keywords: | rent control, rental brake, housing construction, Germany |
| JEL: | R31 R38 C23 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp2182 |
| By: | Estelle X Liu; Jibingxin Han |
| Abstract: | China's urban housing system is structurally segmented: market-based residential housing accounts for only about 40 percent of occupied urban dwellings, with the remainder split between rental and legacy housing acquired outside the market. Using 2000–2020 Population Censuses and the 2019 China Household Finance Survey, this paper documents that housing tenure is systematically associated with distinct household consumption patterns. Conditional on income, wealth, and household characteristics, legacy homeowners exhibit lower discretionary consumption and higher income responsiveness than renters, while market homeowners' consumption is closely tied to housing wealth. These patterns are stable across survey waves and broadly consistent with panel-based evidence, pointing to structural balance-sheet differences across residential regimes as important correlates of household consumption behavior in China. |
| Keywords: | China; housing market; housing misallocation; household consumption; affordability; household balance sheets |
| Date: | 2026–09–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2026/193 |
| By: | Erik Heitfield; Mallick Hossain; Katie Merritt |
| Abstract: | Using fine-grained data on 465, 000 Florida home sales over twelve years and semiparametric machine learning methods, we examine how home prices respond to weather-related risk factors. After controlling for geography, home characteristics, and transaction features, we find that home prices are negatively related to property-level expected weather losses derived from catastrophe models, insurance premiums, and exposure to recent hurricanes, but with notably different magnitudes. Expected weather losses show the strongest association with prices and are consistent with markets rationally capitalizing anticipated future losses into current property valuations. Insurance premiums have a statistically significant but economically more modest negative effect on home prices, suggesting that housing market participants may view premium differences across properties as more transitory. Recent hurricane exposure has only a marginal effect on house prices, suggesting that hurricane risk is well-understood in Florida so that realized weather events convey little new information about future losses. |
| Keywords: | catastrophe modeling; home insurance; hurricanes; natural hazards; weather |
| Date: | 2026–09–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfe:103789 |
| By: | Guillaume Chapelle (Théorie économique, modélisation et applications); Alain Trannoy (Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, AMSE, Marseille, France) |
| Abstract: | Demand for housing floor space in a given location has rarely been estimated. Using data from the French cadaster and housing transaction records, we analyze the impact of a VAT drop from 20% to 5.5% on cumulated residential investments introduced under the 2006 French Urban Renewal Act in both the core of about 600 deprived areas and their surroundings. Our findings reveal that reduced VAT leads to a 2% increase in housing-stock surface area in treated zones without triggering an influx of people. Translated into investment terms, the gain represents about 2 years of housing investment in ten years. Estimates of the price elasticity of housing capital are lower in the surroundings (-0.24) than in the core of deprived areas (- 0.42), with full price transmission to the demand side in the latter and around 60% in the surroundings, where landlords and developers capture roughly equal shares of the rest. We also confirm previous studies in finding a low price elasticity of supply (0.35) for France. We estimate the net gain in total surplus to €13, 6 Bn over the implementation period. Using data from the French cadaster and housing transaction records, we analyze the impact of the VAT drop from 20% to 5.5% on residential investment around 600 deprived areas. We find that the reduced VAT rate increases housing stock surface by 2%. In investment terms, this equals roughly two years of housing investment over a decade with a gain of total surplus of €13Bn. We estimate the price elasticity of housing capital at -0.24, with a 60% pass-through; landlords and developers each capture roughly half the remainder. We also confirm a low housing supply elasticity in France (0.35). |
| Keywords: | Housing; Price-elasticities; VAT |
| JEL: | D61 H22 R31 |
| Date: | 2026–09–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aim:wpaimx:2626 |
| By: | Haifang Huang (University of Alberta); John Helliwell (University of British Columbia) |
| Abstract: | We ask whether housing unaffordability belongs in the misery index, pairing national house prices with the Gallup World Poll for up to 57 economies. Worsening affordability is robustly associated with lower average Cantril life evaluation: a ten percent rise in house prices, holding per-capita income fixed, weighs as heavily as a one-to-two percentage-point rise in unemployment. Housing belongs in the index. Equity prices, in contrast, carry little weight. The burden appears independently in the Integrated Values Surveys, which measure life satisfaction instead. In Gallup, the young and the middle-aged carry similar penalties, and even seniors are not completely spared. |
| Keywords: | subjective well-being; house price; misery index |
| JEL: | I31 R31 E24 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:albaec:023641 |
| By: | Luca Casolaro (Bank of Italy); Claudio Luccioletti (Bank of Italy); Andrea Neri (Bank of Italy) |
| Abstract: | The paper analyses the relationship between demographic trends and housing prices in Italy at the municipal level over the period 2010-2025. It aims to assess the extent to which population changes are associated with housing prices and whether this relationship emerges primarily in the short or long term. The analysis also considers potential local heterogeneity, distinguishing between remote areas (aree interne) and more accessible areas (aree non interne), as well as across the country's macro-regions. |
| Keywords: | housing prices, demographic trends, remote areas, panel data |
| JEL: | R31 J11 C23 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_1043_26 |
| By: | Dawn C Parker (University of Waterloo [Waterloo]); Corrine Ida (LISA - Laboratoire « Lieux, Identités, eSpaces, Activités » (UMR CNRS 6240 LISA) - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Università di Corsica Pasquale Paoli [Université de Corse Pascal Paoli]); Claudio Detotto (LISA - Laboratoire « Lieux, Identités, eSpaces, Activités » (UMR CNRS 6240 LISA) - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Università di Corsica Pasquale Paoli [Université de Corse Pascal Paoli], CRENOS - UniCa - Università degli Studi di Cagliari = University of Cagliari = Université de Cagliari); Tatiana Filatova; Jiaqi Ge (TU Delft - Delft University of Technology); Yu Huang (OUC - Ocean University of China); Eric Innocenti (LISA - Laboratoire « Lieux, Identités, eSpaces, Activités » (UMR CNRS 6240 LISA) - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Università di Corsica Pasquale Paoli [Université de Corse Pascal Paoli]); Nicholas Magliocca (UA - University of Alabama [Tuscaloosa]); J. Gareth Polhill (The James Hutton Institute); Dominique Prunetti (LISA - Laboratoire « Lieux, Identités, eSpaces, Activités » (UMR CNRS 6240 LISA) - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Università di Corsica Pasquale Paoli [Université de Corse Pascal Paoli]); Shahab Valaei Sharif (University of Waterloo [Waterloo]) |
| Abstract: | In recent years, a wide range of agent-based real-estate market models (ABM-REMMs) have been developed to incorporate actor and environmental heterogeneity and feedbacks between scales, features not possible in traditional real-estate market models. Despite close communication and collaboration between scholars, independent research groups have developed customized model codes, often in different programming languages. To synthesize this knowledge, we present a new meta-model template "MR POTATOHEAD: Real Estate Market Edition" (MP-REME), developed collaboratively by the authors, to describe and compare six independently developed ABM-REMMs. We demonstrate that the six models are special cases of a generalized meta-model, which is suitable for a wide range of agent-based exploration of real-estate market dynamics. The MP-REME templates can serve as a design pattern to catalyze development of a community ABM-REMM code base, facilitating faster model development, model transparency and replicability, and model comparison. Residential real estate (land and housing) markets impact a wide variety of critical socio-ecological outcomes at local, national, and international scales, and scientifically robust and transparent real-estate market models are needed to explore the impacts of these markets on socio-ecological outcomes. Given the range of differences between models, development of such a standard model is critical to increase confidence in the application of ABM-REMMs to policy analysis of issues such as urban flooding, carbon sequestration, heat island mitigation, and biodiversity preservation. |
| Keywords: | reuseable building blocks, model replication, design pattern, real-estate markets, agent-based modeling |
| Date: | 2026–09–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05747447 |
| By: | Yi Fan; Chongyu Wang; Ke Xu |
| Abstract: | Using the October 2021 announcement of Hong Kong's Northern Metropolis Plan as a quasi-natural experiment, we examine its impacts on households, firms, and demographics. Leveraging 100, 576 housing transactions, 4.7 million consumption records, and district-level demographic data, difference-in-differences estimates show housing prices in the treated region rose by 3.9% within one year, alongside a 4.1% increase in consumption. Firm entry expanded, with inflows of higher-income, higher-educated households. We find a mild, lagged spillover to Shenzhen's housing market but no significant firm response. While the policy narrows cross-region inequality, it increases within-region inequality and raises affordability concerns for lower-SES households. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2609.19032 |
| By: | Onur Polat (Hacettepe University, Informatics Institute 06800 Beytepe, Ankara, Turkiye); Hardik A. Marfatia (Department of Economics, Northeastern Illinois University, 5500 N. St. Louis Ave, Chicago 60625, USA); Christophe Andre (Economics Department, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 75775 Paris, Cedex 16, France); Rangan Gupta (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines time-varying connectedness and volatility spillovers between housing markets and macroeconomic policy conditions, with particular emphasis on the role of housing deregulation. Using daily data from September 2007 to May 2026, we estimate a 15-node TVP-VAR network comprising housing volatility series for ten major U.S. metropolitan areas alongside five policy and financial indicators: the housing deregulation index, economic policy uncertainty (EPU), a spliced monetary policy proxy (Effective Federal Funds Rate/Krippner Shadow Short Rate), the Aruoba-Diebold-Scotti (ADS) business conditions index, and the 5-year breakeven inflation rate (T5YIE). Volatility inputs are filtered using a multivariate GJR-GARCH model augmented with time-varying skewness and kurtosis (GJRSK), and parameters are estimated within a Bayesian prior (BayesPrior) framework. The Total Connectedness Index reveals a counter-cyclical network topology, peaking during the 2008 financial crisis, the 2020 pandemic, and the 2024 monetary pivot. Pairwise decompositions reveal pronounced heterogeneity across cities: supply-inelastic coastal market, New York (peak spillover 45.5%), San Diego (48.8%), and San Francisco (39.8%), absorb the largest regulatory shocks, while deregulation also transmits persistently to monetary policy conditions (Shadow Short Rate positive in 87.7% of observations), real activity, and inflation expectations. These findings carry direct implications for macroprudential policy design and institutional portfolio risk management in the U.S. housing sector. |
| Keywords: | Housing Volatility Networks, Housing Deregulation; TVP-VAR, Net Pairwise Spillovers, GJRSK Volatility, BayesPrior |
| JEL: | C32 G10 R31 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pre:wpaper:202630 |
| By: | Regina López-Ley; Diego Mayorga; Stefano Molina; Jorge Pérez Pérez |
| Abstract: | We study how the COVID-19 pandemic changed the valuation of amenities in the prices of short-term rental listings in Mexico, a country that had few tourism and mobility restrictions during the pandemic. Using data on the universe of short-term rental listings in Mexico from 2018 to 2023, we estimate hedonic price models and analyze how their coefficients changed for amenities associated with a lower risk of COVID-19 infection and reduced face-to-face contact. Our results show that the valuation of remote work amenities, such as workspaces, open-space amenities like beachfronts, and reduced-contact amenities, such as private spaces, increased significantly during the pandemic. Some of these valuation changes, such as those for workspaces and elevators, persist in the post-pandemic-restrictions period. The results are consistent with both a changing taste for certain amenities and a change in the demographic composition of short-term rental consumers in Mexico. |
| Keywords: | Hedonic pricing models;COVID-19;tourism;Airbnb |
| JEL: | R21 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdm:wpaper:2026-03 |
| By: | Wang, Reuben Xianwei |
| Abstract: | In global urban discourse, the modernist tower-and-slab high-rise is almost universally pathologized as a spectacular failure of top-down social engineering. From Western public housing projects to post-communist concrete blocs, these monoliths are widely viewed as deterministic monuments to alienation and the limits of authoritarian high modernism. This paper challenges that architectural determinism by examining a stark global outlier: Singapore. In the city-state, high-modernist public housing not only survives but thrives, sheltering eighty percent of the population in highly livable, wealth-generating estates. By analyzing this spatial anomaly, this paper argues that the physical reality of the high-rise is not inherently criminogenic or socially isolating. The widespread global decay of this typology was fundamentally a downstream symptom of neoliberal abandonment and the hollowing of the welfare state. Singapore’s exception is sustained by fiercely guarded political-economic conditions: a radical state monopoly on land, the mobilization of captive domestic capital, and an ideological commitment to housing as a perpetual nation-building project. Ultimately, the Singaporean outlier proves that when insulated from market abandonment and continuously adapted to civic metis, the high-modernist high-rise ceases to be a dystopian relic, functioning instead as a highly livevable urban form. |
| Date: | 2026–09–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:xws3b_v1 |