IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

Explaining House Price Fluctuations

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Christian Hott

Abstract

A comparison of fundamental house prices with actual prices indicates that house prices fluctuate more than fundamentally justified. This fact is very hard to explain with standard rational agent models. This paper develops a housing market model that allows to examine the price effects of various kinds of agents' expectations. In this framework I we show that the consideration of behavioural aspects like herding behaviour, speculation and momentum trading can help to explain actual house price fluctuations. Following the different approaches, agents overreact to fundamentals and are influenced by past price movements and returns.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. 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.

File URL: https://www.snb.ch/n/mmr/reference/working_paper_2009_05/source/working_paper_2009_05.n.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by Swiss National Bank in its series Working Papers with number 2009-05.

as
in new window

Length: 43 pages
Date of creation: 2009
Handle: RePEc:snb:snbwpa:2009-05
Contact details of provider: Postal:
Börsenstrasse 15, P. O. Box, CH - 8022 Zürich

Phone: +41 58 631 31 11
Fax: +41 58 631 39 11
Web page: https://www.snb.ch/en/ifor/research/
Email:


More information through EDIRC

Keywords: House Prices; Bubbles; Investor Behaviour;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
  • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
  • R21 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Housing Demand

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as
in new window


  1. Charles Himmelberg & Christopher Mayer & Todd Sinai, 2005. "Assessing High House Prices: Bubbles, Fundamentals and Misperceptions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 67-92, Fall.
  2. Levin, Eric J. & Wright, Robert E., 1997. "The impact of speculation on house prices in the United Kingdom," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 567-585, October.
  3. Pain, Nigel & Westaway, Peter, 1997. "Modelling structural change in the UK housing market: A comparison of alternative house price models," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 587-610, October.
  4. Holly, Sean & Jones, Natasha, 1997. "House prices since the 1940s: Cointegration, demography and asymmetries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 549-565, October.
  5. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Christian Julliard, 2008. "Money Illusion and Housing Frenzies," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(1), pages 135-180, January.
  6. Todd Sinai & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2005. "Owner-Occupied Housing as a Hedge Against Rent Risk," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 120(2), pages 763-789.
  7. Muellbauer, John & Murphy, Anthony, 1997. "Booms and Busts in the UK Housing Market," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(445), pages 1701-1727, November.
  8. Avery, Christopher & Zemsky, Peter, 1998. "Multidimensional Uncertainty and Herd Behavior in Financial Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 724-748, September.
  9. Coakley, Jerry & Fuertes, Ana-Maria, 2006. "Valuation ratios and price deviations from fundamentals," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(8), pages 2325-2346, August.
  10. Harrison Hong & Jeremy C. Stein, 1999. "A Unified Theory of Underreaction, Momentum Trading, and Overreaction in Asset Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 2143-2184, December.
  11. Christian Hott & Pierre Monnin, 2008. "Fundamental Real Estate Prices: An Empirical Estimation with International Data," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 36(4), pages 427-450, May.
  12. Dougherty, Ann & Van Order, Robert, 1982. "Inflation, Housing Costs, and the Consumer Price Index," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(1), pages 154-164, March.
  13. Jonathan McCarthy & Richard Peach, 2004. "Are home prices the next "bubble"?," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Dec, pages 1-17.
  14. Diba, Behzad T & Grossman, Herschel I, 1988. "The Theory of Rational Bubbles in Stock Prices," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 98(392), pages 746-754, September.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as
in new window


Cited by:

  1. Elizabeth Steiner, 2010. "Estimating a Stock-Flow Model for the Swiss Housing Market," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 146(III), pages 601-627, September.
  2. Granziera, Eleonora & Kozicki, Sharon, 2015. "House price dynamics: Fundamentals and expectations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 152-165.
  3. Fernando Borraz & Gerardo Licandro & Jorge Ponce, 2012. "Precios de viviendas. una metodología para evaluar desvíos respecto a sus fundamentos," Documentos de trabajo 2012016, Banco Central del Uruguay.
  4. Oestmann Marco & Bennöhr Lars, 2015. "Determinants of house price dynamics. What can we learn from search engine data?," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 66(1), pages 99-127, April.
  5. Christian Hott, 2009. "Banks and Real Estate Prices," Working Papers 2009-08, Swiss National Bank.
  6. Christian Pierdzioch & Jan Christoph Rülke & Georg Stadtmann, 2012. "House Price Forecasts, Forecaster Herding, and the Recent Crisis," International Journal of Financial Studies, MDPI, Open Access Journal, vol. 1(1), pages 1-14, November.
  7. Jorge Ponce, 2012. "Precio de fundamentos para las viviendas en Uruguay," Documentos de trabajo 2012017, Banco Central del Uruguay.
  8. Darius Kulikauskas, 2015. "Measuring fundamental housing prices in the Baltic States: empirical approach," ERES eres2015_31, European Real Estate Society (ERES).
  9. Pierdzioch, Christian & Rülke, Jan Christoph & Stadtmann, Georg, 2012. "House price forecasts in times of crisis: Do forecasters herd?," Discussion Papers 318, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Department of Business Administration and Economics.
  10. José Manuel Marqués & Luis Ángel Maza & Margarita Rubio, 2010. "A comparison of recent real estate cycles in Spain, the United States and the United Kingdom," Economic Bulletin, Banco de España;Economic Bulletin Homepage, issue JAN, January.
  11. Jorge Ponce, 2015. "Fundamentals for the Price of Housing in Uruguay," Monetaria, Centro de Estudios Monetarios Latinoamericanos, vol. 0(2), pages 175-201, July-Dece.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:snb:snbwpa:2009-05. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Enzo Rossi)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.