IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qed/wpaper/1276.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Search, Liquidity And The Dynamics Of House Prices And Construction

Author

Listed:
  • Allen Head
  • Amy Hongfei Sun
  • Huw Lloyd-Ellis

    (Queen's University)

Abstract

We characterize the dynamics of relative house prices, housing sales, construction rates and population growth in response to city-specific income shocks for 106 US cities. We then develop a dynamic search model of the housing market in which construction, the entry of buyers, house prices and sales are endogenously determined in equilibrium. Our theory generates dynamics that are qualitatively consistent with our empirical observations and a version of the economy calibrated to match long-run features of the housing market in U.S. cities offers a substantial quantitative improvement over similar models with no search. In particular, variation in the time it takes to sell a house (i.e. the house's liquidity) induces house values and transaction prices to exhibit momentum, or serially correlated growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Allen Head & Amy Hongfei Sun & Huw Lloyd-Ellis, 2012. "Search, Liquidity And The Dynamics Of House Prices And Construction," Working Paper 1276, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    • Handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:1276
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econ.queensu.ca/sites/econ.queensu.ca/files/qed_wp_1276.pdf
    File Function: First version 2012
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Han Bin Kang & Mona J. Gardner, 1989. "Selling Price and Marketing Time in the Residential Real Estate Market," Journal of Real Estate Research, American Real Estate Society, vol. 4(1), pages 21-35.
    2. Binder, Michael & Hsiao, Cheng & Pesaran, M. Hashem, 2005. "Estimation And Inference In Short Panel Vector Autoregressions With Unit Roots And Cointegration," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(4), pages 795-837, August.
    3. Antonia Díaz & Belén Jerez, 2013. "House Prices, Sales, And Time On The Market: A Search‐Theoretic Framework," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 54(3), pages 837-872, August.
    4. Arellano, Manuel & Bover, Olympia, 1995. "Another look at the instrumental variable estimation of error-components models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 29-51, July.
    5. James M. Poterba, 1991. "House Price Dynamics: The Role of Tax Policy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 22(2), pages 143-204.
    6. Andrew Caplin & John Leahy, 2011. "Trading Frictions and House Price Dynamics," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 283-303, October.
    7. Roback, Jennifer, 1982. "Wages, Rents, and the Quality of Life," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(6), pages 1257-1278, December.
    8. Paul Anglin & Richard Arnott, 1999. "Are Brokers' Commission Rates on Home Sales Too High? A Conceptual Analysis," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 27(4), pages 719-749, December.
    9. Albert Saiz, 2010. "The Geographic Determinants of Housing Supply," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(3), pages 1253-1296.
    10. Jason Allen & Robert Amano & David P. Byrne & Allan W. Gregory, 2009. "Canadian city housing prices and urban market segmentation," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 42(3), pages 1132-1149, August.
    11. Maurice J. G. Bun & Frank Windmeijer, 2010. "The weak instrument problem of the system GMM estimator in dynamic panel data models," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 13(1), pages 95-126, February.
    12. Dennis R. Capozza & Patric H. Hendershott & Charlotte Mack, 2004. "An Anatomy of Price Dynamics in Illiquid Markets: Analysis and Evidence from Local Housing Markets," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 32(1), pages 1-32, March.
    13. Edward L. Glaeser & Joseph Gyourko, 2006. "Housing Dynamics," NBER Working Papers 12787, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Albrecht, James W. & Gautier, Pieter A. & Vroman, Susan B., 2003. "Matching with multiple applications," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 67-70, January.
    15. Richard K. Green & Stephen Malpezzi & Stephen K. Mayo, 2005. "Metropolitan-Specific Estimates of the Price Elasticity of Supply of Housing, and Their Sources," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 334-339, May.
    16. Blundell, Richard & Bond, Stephen, 1998. "Initial conditions and moment restrictions in dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 115-143, August.
    17. Davis, Morris A. & Palumbo, Michael G., 2008. "The price of residential land in large US cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 352-384, January.
    18. Love, Inessa & Zicchino, Lea, 2006. "Financial development and dynamic investment behavior: Evidence from panel VAR," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 190-210, May.
    19. Krainer, John, 2001. "A Theory of Liquidity in Residential Real Estate Markets," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 32-53, January.
    20. Monika Piazzesi & Martin Schneider, 2009. "Momentum Traders in the Housing Market: Survey Evidence and a Search Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 406-411, May.
    21. Morris A. Davis & Francois Ortalo-Magne, 2011. "Household Expenditures, Wages, Rents," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(2), pages 248-261, April.
    22. Davis, Morris A. & Heathcote, Jonathan, 2007. "The price and quantity of residential land in the United States," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(8), pages 2595-2620, November.
    23. Merlo, Antonio & Ortalo-Magne, Francois, 2004. "Bargaining over residential real estate: evidence from England," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 192-216, September.
    24. Charles Ka Yui Leung & Youngman Chun Fai Leong & Ida Yin Sze Chan, 2002. "TOM: Why Isn’t Price Enough?," International Real Estate Review, Global Social Science Institute, vol. 5(1), pages 91-115.
    25. Allen Head & Huw Lloyd-Ellis, 2012. "Housing Liquidity, Mobility, and the Labour Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(4), pages 1559-1589.
    26. Blackley, Dixie M, 1999. "The Long-Run Elasticity of New Housing Supply in the United States: Empirical Evidence for 1950 to 1994," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 25-42, January.
    27. Klein, Paul, 2000. "Using the generalized Schur form to solve a multivariate linear rational expectations model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 24(10), pages 1405-1423, September.
    28. Wheaton, William C, 1990. "Vacancy, Search, and Prices in a Housing Market Matching Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1270-1292, December.
    29. Topel, Robert H & Rosen, Sherwin, 1988. "Housing Investment in the United States," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(4), pages 718-740, August.
    30. Martin Schneider & Monika Piazzesi, 2009. "Momentum traders in a search model of the housing market," 2009 Meeting Papers 1266, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    31. Malpezzi, Stephen, 1999. "A Simple Error Correction Model of House Prices," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 27-62, March.
    32. Moen, Espen R, 1997. "Competitive Search Equilibrium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(2), pages 385-411, April.
    33. Harding, John P. & Rosenthal, Stuart S. & Sirmans, C.F., 2007. "Depreciation of housing capital, maintenance, and house price inflation: Estimates from a repeat sales model," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 193-217, March.
    34. Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh & Pierre-Olivier Weill, 2010. "Why Has House Price Dispersion Gone Up?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(4), pages 1567-1606.
    35. Del Negro, Marco & Otrok, Christopher, 2007. "99 Luftballons: Monetary policy and the house price boom across U.S. states," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(7), pages 1962-1985, October.
    36. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    37. Judson, Ruth A. & Owen, Ann L., 1999. "Estimating dynamic panel data models: a guide for macroeconomists," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 9-15, October.
    38. Gerdie Everaert, 2013. "Orthogonal to backward mean transformation for dynamic panel data models," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 16(2), pages 179-221, June.
    39. Arthur J. Hosios, 1990. "On The Efficiency of Matching and Related Models of Search and Unemployment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 57(2), pages 279-298.
    40. Joseph Gyourko & Albert Saiz, 2006. "Construction Costs And The Supply Of Housing Structure," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(4), pages 661-680, October.
    41. John Krainer, 2008. "Falling house prices and rising time on the market," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue mar21.
    42. James Albrecht & Axel Anderson & Eric Smith & Susan Vroman, 2007. "Opportunistic Matching In The Housing Market," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 48(2), pages 641-664, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Allen Head & Huw Lloyd-Ellis & Hongfei Sun, 2016. "Search, Liquidity, and the Dynamics of House Prices and Construction: Corrigendum," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(4), pages 1214-1219, April.
    2. Eric Smith & Zoe Xie & Lei Fang, 2022. "The Short and the Long of It: Stock-Flow Matching in the US Housing Market," CESifo Working Paper Series 10035, CESifo.
    3. Antonia Díaz & Belén Jerez, 2013. "House Prices, Sales, And Time On The Market: A Search‐Theoretic Framework," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 54(3), pages 837-872, August.
    4. Han, Lu & Strange, William C., 2015. "The Microstructure of Housing Markets," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 813-886, Elsevier.
    5. Alina Arefeva, 2016. "How Auctions Amplify House-Price Fluctuations," 2016 Meeting Papers 714, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Charles Ka Yui Leung & Joe Cho Yiu Ng, 2018. "Macro Aspects of Housing," GRU Working Paper Series GRU_2018_016, City University of Hong Kong, Department of Economics and Finance, Global Research Unit.
    7. Essi Eerola & Niku Maattanen, 2018. "Borrowing constraints and housing market liquidity," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 27, pages 184-204, January.
    8. Leung, Charles Ka Yui & Tse, Chung-Yi, 2017. "Flipping in the housing market," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 232-263.
    9. Chao He & Randall Wright & Yu Zhu, 2015. "Housing and Liquidity," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(3), pages 435-455, July.
    10. Espen R Moen & Plamen T Nenov & Florian Sniekers, 2021. "Buying First or Selling First in Housing Markets," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(1), pages 38-81.
    11. Davis, Morris A. & Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn, 2015. "Housing, Finance, and the Macroeconomy," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 753-811, Elsevier.
    12. Boragan Aruoba & Morris Davis & Randall Wright, 2016. "Homework in Monetary Economics: Inflation, Home Production, and the Production of Homes," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 21, pages 105-124, July.
    13. Head, Allen & Sun, Hongfei & Zhou, Chenggang, 2023. "Indebted sellers, liquidity and mortgage standards," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    14. Antonia Díaz & Belén Jerez & Juan Pablo Rincón-Zapatero, 2023. "Housing Prices and Credit Constraints in Competitive Search," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(657), pages 220-270.
    15. Halket, Jonathan & Pignatti Morano di Custoza, Matteo, 2015. "Homeownership and the scarcity of rentals," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 107-123.
    16. Gabrovski, Miroslav & Ortego-Marti, Victor, 2019. "The cyclical behavior of the Beveridge Curve in the housing market," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 361-381.
    17. Kashiwagi, Masanori, 2014. "A search-theoretic model of the rental and homeownership markets," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 33-47.
    18. Piazzesi, M. & Schneider, M., 2016. "Housing and Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1547-1640, Elsevier.
    19. Daisy J. Huang & Charles Ka Yui Leung & Chung-Yi Tse, 2018. "What Accounts for the Differences in Rent-Price Ratio and Turnover Rate? A Search-and-Matching Approach," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 431-475, October.
    20. Gaetano Lisi, 2014. "Home-seekers in the Housing Market," International Real Estate Review, Global Social Science Institute, vol. 17(1), pages 47-62.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    House prices; liquidity; search; construction; dynamic panel;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E30 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets
    • R10 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Canadian Macro Study Group

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:1276. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mark Babcock (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/qedquca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.