IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedbwp/95744.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

House Prices and Rents in the 21st Century

Author

Abstract

We study the joint evolution of prices and rents of residential property. After constructing rent and price indices for renter- and owner-occupied properties, we decompose the change in the price of occupant-owned property into (1) changes in rent, (2) changes in the relative prices of investor- and occupant-owned properties, and (3) changes in the price-rent ratio. Via a simple model, we link our decomposition to different sources of variation in house prices. We argue that while the 2000s boom was plausibly driven by exuberant expectations, the boom of the 2020s more likely resulted from a preference shock.

Suggested Citation

  • Lara Loewenstein & Paul S. Willen, 2023. "House Prices and Rents in the 21st Century," Working Papers 23-2, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbwp:95744
    DOI: 10.29412/res.wp.2023.02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-department-working-paper/2023/house-prices-and-rents-in-the-21st-century
    File Function: Summary
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/Workingpapers/PDF/2023/wp2302.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.29412/res.wp.2023.02?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christopher L Foote & Lara Loewenstein & Paul S Willen, 2021. "Cross-Sectional Patterns of Mortgage Debt during the Housing Boom: Evidence and Implications," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(1), pages 229-259.
    2. Philippe Bracke, 2015. "House Prices and Rents: Microevidence from a Matched Data Set in Central London," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 43(2), pages 403-431, June.
    3. Karl E. Case & Robert J. Shiller, 1987. "Prices of single-family homes since 1970: new indexes for four cities," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Sep, pages 45-56.
    4. Daniel Greenwald & Adam Guren, 2019. "Do Credit Conditions Move House Prices?," 2019 Meeting Papers 1334, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. James M. Poterba, 1984. "Tax Subsidies to Owner-Occupied Housing: An Asset-Market Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(4), pages 729-752.
    6. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi, 2009. "The Consequences of Mortgage Credit Expansion: Evidence from the U.S. Mortgage Default Crisis," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(4), pages 1449-1496.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Howard, Greg & Liebersohn, Jack & Ozimek, Adam, 2023. "The short- and long-run effects of remote work on U.S. housing markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(1), pages 166-184.
    2. Luis Lopez & Nitzan Tzur-Ilan, 2025. "Air Pollution and Rent Prices: Evidence from Wildfire Smoke Plumes," Working Papers 2502, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    3. Ivan Jeliazkov & Shubham Karnawat & Mohammad Arshad Rahman & Angela Vossmeyer, 2023. "Flexible Bayesian Quantile Analysis of Residential Rental Rates," Papers 2305.13687, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2023.
    4. George Dotsis & Panagiotis Petris & Dimitris Psychoyios, 2025. "Assessing Housing Market Crashes over the Past 150 years," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 70(2), pages 359-377, February.

    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. repec:fip:fedcwq:95440 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Arigoni, Filippo & McCann, Fergal & Yao, Fang, 2022. "Mortgage credit and house prices: evidence to inform macroprudential policy," Financial Stability Notes 11/FS/22, Central Bank of Ireland.
    3. Daniel I. García, 2022. "Second‐home buying and the housing boom and bust," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 50(1), pages 33-58, March.
    4. Greg Howard & Jack Liebersohn, 2023. "Regional Divergence and House Prices," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 49, pages 312-350, July.
    5. Michael Bailey & Eduardo Dávila & Theresa Kuchler & Johannes Stroebel, 2019. "House Price Beliefs And Mortgage Leverage Choice," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(6), pages 2403-2452.
    6. Manconi, Alberto & Braggion, Fabio & Zhu, Haikun, 2018. "Can Technology Undermine Macroprudential Regulation? Evidence from Peer-to-Peer Credit in China," CEPR Discussion Papers 12668, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Lepinteur, Anthony & Waltl, Sofie R., 2020. "Tracking Owners' Sentiments: Subjective Home Values, Expectations and House Price Dynamics," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 299, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    8. Albanesi, Stefania & DeGiorgi, Giacomo & Nosal, Jaromir, 2022. "Credit growth and the financial crisis: A new narrative," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 118-139.
    9. Graeme O'Meara, 2015. "Housing Bubbles and Monetary Policy: A Reassessment," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 46(4), pages 521-565.
    10. C. Labonne & C. Welter-Nicol, 2015. "MERCURE : Cheap Credit, Unaffordable Houses?," Débats Economiques et financiers 20, Banque de France.
    11. Christopher Foote & Kristopher Gerardi & Lorenz Goette & Paul Willen, 2010. "Reducing Foreclosures: No Easy Answers," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, Volume 24, pages 89-138, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Hyun Jeong Kim & Jong Chil Son & Myung-Soo Yie, 2017. "House Price Dynamics with Household Debt: The Korean Case-super-," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 31(1), pages 39-59, March.
    13. Deeksha Gupta, 2018. "Too Much Skin-in-the-Game? The Effect of Mortgage Market Concentration on Credit and House Prices," 2018 Meeting Papers 512, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    14. Sarah Carrington & Jakob B. Madsen, 2011. "House Prices, Credit and Willingness to Lend," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 87(279), pages 537-557, December.
    15. Baltagi, Badi H. & Li, Jing, 2015. "Cointegration of matched home purchases and rental price indexes — Evidence from Singapore," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 80-88.
    16. Wu, Guiying Laura & Feng, Qu & Li, Pei, 2015. "Does local governments’ budget deficit push up housing prices in China?," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 183-196.
    17. John Y. Campbell & João F. Cocco, 2015. "A Model of Mortgage Default," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(4), pages 1495-1554, August.
    18. Matthew J. Botsch, 2022. "Public and Private Benefits of Information in Markets for Securitized Assets," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 319-365, June.
    19. L. Rachel Ngai & Silvana Tenreyro, 2014. "Hot and Cold Seasons in the Housing Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(12), pages 3991-4026, December.
    20. Nelson Lind, 2017. "Credit Regimes and the Seeds of Crisis," 2017 Meeting Papers 1474, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    21. Yuxi Yao, 2023. "Accounting for the decline in homeownership among the young," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 41(1), pages 79-102, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    housing bubbles; credit shocks; rent-price ratio; house price overvaluation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R30 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - General
    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets
    • E30 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedbwp:95744. 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: Catherine Spozio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbbous.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.