There is a long-run `Beveridge Curve' in the Housing market given by the negative relationship between the vacancy rate of housing and the rate of household formation. This is true in the owner-occupied market, the rental market, and the total market for housing irrespective of ownership status. The Beveridge Curve represents a long-run supply condition that can be explained by assuming that (1) the cost to produce a new house is decreasing in the growth rate of the housing stock and (2) the probability to sell a new house is decreasing in the vacancy rate. Short-run deviations from the Beveridge curve represent a measurement of oversupply. Using a years of supply metric, for the total housing market irrespective of ownership, in 2007-2008 there were 0.995 years of supply, more than three times the previous peak of 0.285 years of supply in 1973-1974. Comparing the rental market to the owner-occupied market, oversupply generally shows up in the rental market, not the owner-occupied market and the oversupply in the rental market is twice as volatile as oversupply in the owner-occupied market, implying that a large part of the market adjustment to housing supply occurs in the rental market. Interestingly two-thirds of the oversupply in 2007-2008 resided in the rental market as opposed to the owner-occupied market. Using FHFA data for house prices, 46% of the movements in oversupply in the owner-occupied market since 1975 can be explained by house price movements. The last result suggests that at short horizons (4-6 years) house prices are not determined by supply. Rather, house prices drive supply at short time horizons, permitting bubbles and oversupplies of housing to form.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Economics Department, Indiana University Bloomington in its series Caepr Working Papers with number
2009-009.