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Why is the rent so darn high? The role of growing demand to live in housing-supply-inelastic cities

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  • Howard, Greg
  • Liebersohn, Jack

Abstract

Real rents measured in the United States CPI increased 17.4 log-points from 2000 to 2018. We present a spatial equilibrium framework to decompose the increase into several channels, including demand to live in housing-supply-inelastic cities. We find location demand contributed significantly: using parameterizations from the literature and a new rent index, we find it is responsible for between 17 and 73 percent of the overall rent increase, and an even larger share in cities where CPI is measured. The wide range is primarily due to a lack of consensus over the population elasticity to rents, so we estimate it by comparing the effects of demand shocks across cities of differing housing supply elasticities. We find that demand changes have similar effects across cities, suggesting a high population elasticity. Therefore, our preferred estimate is that location demand accounts for more than half of the increase. We discuss implications for housing supply policy.

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  • Howard, Greg & Liebersohn, Jack, 2021. "Why is the rent so darn high? The role of growing demand to live in housing-supply-inelastic cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:juecon:v:124:y:2021:i:c:s0094119021000516
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2021.103369
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    Cited by:

    1. Greg Howard & Jack Liebersohn, . "Regional Divergence and House Prices," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. Dias, Daniel A. & Duarte, João B., 2015. "Monetary Policy and Homeownership: Empirical Evidence, Theory, and Policy Implications," MPRA Paper 112252, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 05 Mar 2021.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Labor mobility; Housing affordability; Regional inequality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation

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