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How Well do Individuals Predict the Selling Prices of their Homes?

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Author Info
Hugo Benítez-Silva
Selcuk Eren
Frank Heiland
Sergi Jiménez-Martín ()

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Abstract

Self-reported home values are widely used as a measure of housing wealth by researchers employing a variety of data sets and studying a number of different individual and household level decisions. The accuracy of this measure is an open empirical question, and requires some type of market assessment of the values reported. In this research, we study the predictive power of self-reported housing wealth when estimating sales prices utilizing the Health and Retirement Study. We find that homeowners, on average, overestimate the value of their properties by between 5% and 10%. More importantly, we are the first to document a strong correlation between accuracy and the economic conditions at the time of the purchase of the property (measured by the prevalent interest rate, the growth of household income, and the growth of median housing prices). While most individuals overestimate the value of their properties, those who bought during more difficult economic times tend to be more accurate, and in some cases even underestimate the value of their house. These results establish a surprisingly strong, likely permanent, and in many cases long-lived, effect of the initial conditions surrounding the purchases of properties, on how individuals value them. This cyclicality of the overestimation of house prices can provide some explanations for the difficulties currently faced by many homeowners, who were expecting large appreciations in home value to rescue them in case of increases in interest rates which could jeopardize their ability to live up to their financial commitments.

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Paper provided by Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra in its series Economics Working Papers with number 1065.

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Date of creation: Feb 2008
Date of revision: Apr 2008
Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:1065

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Web page: http://www.econ.upf.edu/

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Related research
Keywords: Self-Reported Housing Values Housing Prices Instrumental Variables Sample Selection Business Cycle Interest Rates Health and Retirement Study

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
C33 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Models with Panel Data
C34 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Truncated and Censored Models

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