Housing price dynamics and bubble risk: the case of Turkey

Abstract

Housing prices have increased substantially in some emerging markets in recent years. Turkish housing market has also experienced a boom over the last decade with rapid house price appreciations. This study is the first to employ two different house price indexes to analyze housing bubble in Turkey in two different time periods, 2010:M1–2014:M12 and 2007:M6–2014:M12. We first capture the determinants of housing price by employing Bounds test and then examine whether rising house prices have been justified by fundamentals by employing OLS/FMOLS/DOLS, Kalman filter and ARIMA models. The Bounds test results suggest that there is a long-term cointegration among house price indexes and housing rent, construction cost and real mortgage interest rate. The results imply that the Turkish housing market has experienced some cases of overvaluation, but not bubble formation. This evidence has several implications for house price dynamics and risks in the Turkish housing market. Based on Turkish experience, the study also draws policy implications for emerging housing markets.     

Housing Supply and Price Reactions: A Comparison Approach to Spanish and Italian Markets

Italian and Spanish property markets have experienced a sustained period of growth since the mid-1990s until 2008 when both markets fell into rapid decline due to the worldwide Financial Economic Crisis (FEC). Although the economic impact of the FEC was similar, each country experienced different reactions in its respective real estate market, changes on house prices, building constructions or planning regulations. This paper presents a new supply equation for Italian and Spanish regional markets. A pool of EGLS/IV Two-Step GLS methods are used to account for cross-sectional heteroskedasticity with fixed effects in order to control space differences. The analysis has been developed at a regional level, and shows the variation in the responsiveness of the new housing supply to prices by region. The results show long-term price supply elasticity by regions, and the negative impact of exogenous shock. They also suggest that house markets follow similar patterns in several regions with elastics responses in most territories and stronger negative impact of credit crunch in Spanish than Italian housing development.     

Icelandic boom and bust: immigration and the housing market

The housing market boom in Iceland in 2004–2007 was driven by international and domestic developments. A simple demand and supply model is fitted to data through the recent boom–bust period. The price equation (demand) is improved by including net immigration as an explanatory variable showing that demographic factors, in addition to mortgage market restructuring, help in explaining swings in the housing market. Evidence of a house price bubble is no longer detected when accounting for the effects of immigration with 1 per cent net immigration yielding a 4–6 per cent rise in house prices. Accuracy in forecasting house price developments is improved by accounting for housing investment behaviour in a separate (supply) equation. The sharp fall in housing investment in 2009 cannot, however, be modelled without the introduction of a dummy variable, accounting for the sudden stop in financing as the Icelandic banking sector failed in late 2008.     

Government Intervention and Impact on the Housing Market in Greater Dublin

This paper examines the conflicting outcomes of government intervention in the housing market with particular reference to taxation instruments. The use of fiscal policy as a demand-side measure within the Irish housing market is discussed. Outcomes include a high growth environment, unsustainable house price inflation and pressure on owner occupiers due to the activities of investors. The paper reviews policy mechanisms advocated under the Bacon Reports and the government's policy response notably in relation to stamp duty changes. The analysis seeks to assess the impact of the policy measures in relation to different housing markets and house types in Dublin. The discussion highlights that the short-term impact of legislative changes can be rapidly nullified by market influences.     

Housing Policy,Wealth Formation and the Singapore Economy

This paper evaluates the contribution of housing policy in Singapore to financial sector development, housing wealth formation and macro-economic performance, both retrospectively and prospectively. It provides an overview of past housing policies and traces the linkages to the financial sector. Housing policy as effected through the Housing and Development Board and the Central Provident Fund (CPF) hampered the development of the commercial housing loans sector and domestic financial markets, but contributed to the overall growth and stability of the housing loans market and associated financial institutions. Housing policy and the trend of housing asset inflation contributed significantly to the formation of both gross and net housing wealth. Economic growth has not suffered from the heavy emphasis on housing investment although various policies that resulted in exogenous shifts in housing demand contributed to increased housing price volatility in the short term. The structure of the housing loans market has also allowed the CPF contribution rate to be more effectively used as an instrument for macro-economic stabilisation.     

德国住房保障体系及其对我国的启示

快速城市化和工业化成功推动了中国城市发展,同时也导致了严重的住房供需矛盾,低收入阶层住房得不到有效保障。纵观西方国家保障性住房的发展历程,各国政府综合运用了多种政策工具对市场进行干预,形成了有效的住房保障发展模式。其中,德国的住房保障体系建设堪称典范,其发展经验受到广泛借鉴。本文对德国住房保障体系的政策演变、资金筹措和监督体系等方面进行了分析,最后结合中国住房保障体系的发展现状提出了相关建议。     

The Limits and Potentials of the Housing Market Enabling Paradigm: An Evaluation of China's Housing Policies from 1998 to 2011

This paper examines the housing policies in China in the last 14 years in the context of the international debate on the World Bank's housing market enabling strategy to improve low-income housing provision in developing countries. A review of China's urban housing outcomes reveals housing price inflation and shortage of affordable housing in the fast expanding housing market. The paper analyzes policies to increase both demand for and supply of housing and argues that these policies have contributed to worsening affordability. This situation has been exacerbated by problems in the institutional framework managing the housing sector. The paper concludes that market enabling alone is not sufficient to achieve a satisfactory housing outcome for low- and middle-income groups in Chinese cities. It advocates more effective and direct public intervention for enhancing social housing provision and tightening market regulation to address both market and government failures to improve housing conditions for lower income groups.     

用可负担能力指数分析我国城镇居民购房负担能力

结合我国最近7年房地产市场实际情况,借鉴国外所用的可负担能力指数理论来验证全国以及北京和上海1998～2004年房价,得出当前我国商品住宅总体上处于可负担水平；北京的房价如此高使得指数一直低于可负担水平但可负担指数在逐渐提高；上海的房价最近两年上涨太快使得指数剧烈下降,由2002 年的可负担下降到2003年和2004年的不可负担水平最后给出相应分析。     

A Nested Housing Market Structure: Additional Evidence

This paper analyses the housing market and its structure in Málaga, a medium-size European city, which has become one of the main Spanish tourist destinations and thus one of the most active housing markets in Spain. This has led to coastal land being misused to the extent that it has almost been used up. First, the market as a whole is studied using the hedonic methodology. Then a method is presented which segments the market into sub-markets, following an ad hoc design based on two criteria: structural (vertical and horizontal dwellings) and location (proximity to the coast). The results show that this segmentation method is efficient, demonstrating implicit attribute prices as well as final house prices which are statistically different from each other, above all when dwellings are next to the coast and between those further away. Finally, some implications for urban policy are drawn.     

Immigration and urban housing market dynamics: the case of Haifa

This paper addresses the interplay between demographics and housing market dynamics in Haifa, Israel. In the 1990s the city of Haifa, with a population of approximately 220,000, absorbed about 45,000 immigrants. The case of Haifa offers a typical non-controlled experiment on how demographic shocks and associated changes in housing demand affect the housing market. The dynamic adjustment of house prices is estimated using an autoregressive, distributed lag ADL model, taking into account spatial spillover effects. The data analyzed cover housing transactions in Haifa between January 1989 and June 1999. The data come from a mortgage database. We used a house price index by tract and by year to investigate the impact of immigration on house price dynamics for a balanced panel of 34 tracts and 11 years. Tests showed that for some of the tracts house price series are not unit root. Most individual series though indicated that a unit root could not be rejected so that we considered house price series as being non-stationary. Also, the hypothesis of no co-integration could not be rejected by the data. Due to inertia we considered lagged spatial spillover effects for the dependent variable. We applied the corrected least squares dummy variable estimator to estimate the parameters of interest. The estimates of the coefficient of the lagged dependent variable suggest stability of the ADL structure. Furthermore, the results indicate a house price correction of almost 70% of the gap between house prices and its fundamental determinants each year. Our results suggest a substantially faster response after the demand shock in Haifa than obtained by others for other cities and regions in the literature. Yet our estimates seem not unreasonable given the large-scale land conversion and urban construction programs in Israel and underline the importance of a responsive supply to dampen house price rises after an unanticipated demographic shock.     

A Multiple Error-Correction Model of Housing Supply

This paper considers supply dynamics in the context of the Irish residential market. The analysis, in a multiple error-correction framework, reveals that although developers did respond to disequilibrium in supply, the rate of adjustment was relatively slow. In contrast, however, disequilibrium in demand did not impact upon supply, suggesting that inelastic supply conditions could explain the prolonged nature of the boom in the Irish market. Increased elasticity in the later stages of the boom may have been a contributory factor in the extent of the house price falls observed in recent years.     

基于挤出效应的住房保障规模对商品住房价格的影响

中国房地产市场中保障性住房的角色和作用愈加重要,保障性住房建设规模正在逐年扩大。商品住房价格变化是供给需求作用的结果,但是随着保障房供给规模的增加,商品住房价格的涨幅也会发生改变,说明保障房的供给规模会对普通商品房的供需产生影响。本文以北京市商品住房市场为例,选取住宅需求、住宅供给、住房投机对价格的影响为自变量,住宅价格为因变量,利用多元回归模型对商品住房价格变化进行实证研究,同时通过考虑保障房供给对住房市场产生的不同挤出效应,分析保障房供给规模供需变化对房价产生的影响,进而为政府制定相关的住房保障政策提供建议和对策。     

Housing and consumer markets in urban China

In China, the real estate sector has been one of the most powerful driving forces in economic development over the past two decades. The housing sector, particularly, has a strong wealth effect on consumption. This has attracted much attention not only in academia but also in society at large. Yet little is known about the relationship between housing and consumption in urban China. An investigation into the causal relationship between the money flow of the housing market and that of the consumer market for local citizens in urban China applies a recently developed method: renormalized partial directed coherence (renormalized PDC). This is an advanced tool to exclude the indirect relationships between the housing and consumer markets. Since the original renormalized PDC cannot show the result numerically, we quantify the relationships by developing a set of criteria for further discussion within the renormalized PDC framework. The empirical work reveals two major findings: (1) the retail price level is quite useful in predicting the housing turnover-income ratio; (2) the rental price is one of the most important factors affecting the fluctuation of retail prices for the case of urban areas in China. A housing turnover-income ratio (HTIR) is developed to evaluate the money flow into the housing market, which provides a new way to carry out data analysis when the usual indicators might be inappropriate. The research provides a reference point for economic policymaking for the relationship between the money flow into the housing market and the money flow into the consumer market.     

Housing price and transaction intensity correlation in Hong Kong: implications for government housing policy

Examination of the causal relationship between housing price and transaction intensity helps us understand the housing market dynamics better. The housing market is a very unique asset market as demand for housing comes from both demand for investment return and demand for a shelter/accommodation. Empirical analysis on this causal relationship therefore provides government with important policy considerations. In this paper, we will examine such correlation between housing price movements and transaction intensity in Hong Kong with a core objective of getting a better understanding of the housing market behavior in this city so that more effective government housing policy could be devised. We examine the price–transaction correlation observed in the Hong Kong housing market by means of a bivariate vector autoregressive (VAR) model, with a time series spanning over the period from 1993 to 2014. Without examining other macroeconomic variables such as employment and gross domestic product, our Granger causality test shows a strong evidence, suggesting that housing price Granger causes transaction intensity in the housing market of Hong Kong, but not vice versa. The findings buttressed by the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model and the bounds test results on cointegration relationships support our conclusion. Based on these results, we question the current government housing policy which aims mainly at suppressing demand and hence transaction intensity, if the objective of government intervention is to bring housing price level to a more affordable level. Housing policy therefore should aim at effectuating the supply channel so that there is a clearer signal of constant and effective supply of housing units, which will eventually help stabilize housing price.     

Panel Data in Housing Research: A Reaction to the Paper by Myers on Cohort Longitudinal Estimation of Housing Careers

Both cross-sectional and panel data can be used to analyse the dynamics of housing markets over time. Myers proposes the method of longitudinal cohort analysis of repeated cross-sectional data for the study of trends in housing market circumstances. He emphasises the problems and limitations of the use of panel data for such purposes. In this article it is argued that Myers underestimates the potentials of panel data for the study of housing market dynamics over time. Panel data are now relatively easy to obtain and use, also for the analysis of long-term changes in housing markets. Prices and turnover rates in housing markets have been shown to be strongly auto-correlated across geographical space. Therefore, panel data can be used to analyse regional differences in housing markets, even if these data have a relatively small sample size.     

Price bubbles and policy interventions in the Chinese housing market

The recent dramatic increases in house prices have led to considerable attention being focused on housing markets in China. Using a unique dataset of city-level house prices and rents, this paper investigates the presence of price bubbles in major Chinese city housing markets. Our findings show evidence of price bubbles in most housing markets, even though the bubbles might be, to a large extent, mitigated by strong government intervention. In order to distinguish rational bubbles from irrational bubbles, we extend the existing work to allow a deterministic time trend and break points in the unit root test of house price–rent ratios. As a consequence, our results demonstrate that the price–rent ratios in most of the sample cities are no longer non-stationary, implying the non-existence of rational bubbles in the housing markets.     

The Global House Price Boom and its Unwinding: An Analysis and a Commentary

The unprecedented rises in house prices across much of the industrialized world during the period 1997–2006 have been closely linked to the massive global credit expansion of the past decade. They have also coincided with the highest rates of growth of the global economy on record. The downturn of house prices in the US that began in late 2006 has been the trigger for the US sub-prime crisis, itself the catalyst for the broad financial crisis that began in August 2007 which by September 2008 had become the worst US financial crisis since 1929. As a result, the structure of the highly influential US mortgage finance system has already changed fundamentally. These US problems will lead to a thorough review of mortgage securitization processes and of the wholesale funding of mortgage finance across the world. However, housing markets and housing finance systems differ significantly between countries and will channel the shocks originating from the US with varying intensity. Given the interdependence of the global economy, the quality of the US policy response and its impact on the depth and duration of the US recession will influence house price downturns in all other countries. This paper, written in the midst of the US crisis, looks to our understanding of fundamental economic and financial relationships: first, to describe the key features of the house price boom; second, to examine the likely impacts of the unwinding of that boom; and, finally, to bring out implications for affordability, the provision of housing credit and the most appropriate forms of tenure for higher risk households.     

预售对住宅价格的影响及住宅价格指数衍生品的开发

作为远期实物交易制度的房地产预售并不必然导致住宅价格的上升,但在供求失衡条件下,远期交易的缺失有可能使得市场价格波动趋于加剧。由于房地产预售制在实践中存在诸多问题,于是我们可以考虑将房地产价格风险规避、投资和投机等交易意愿从实物交易转移到房地产指数衍生合约交易上,从而使得房地产市场的实物交易更多地体现真实的消费需求。衍生市场有效的套期保值、投机需求管理更有助于市场供求平衡的实现。     

供求视角下的高房价成因与治理对策探讨

中国住房价格的持续高涨,已经引起决策者和学者们的广泛关注。本文结合我国的特殊国情,从政府、开发商和居民购房心理等角度出发,从供给和需求两方面分析高房价成因。分析发现：政府对土地的垄断,“招拍挂”制度等是供给层面造成高房价的五大原因。快速城市化、房价只涨不跌的预期等是需求层面造成高房价的五大原因。基于此,针对性地提出调控房价的对策建议。     

Expectation Adjustment in the Housing Market: Insights from the Scottish Auction System

This paper examines price expectation adjustment of house buyers and sellers to rapid changes in the housing market using data from Scotland where houses are sold through ‘first-price sealed-bid’ auctions. These auctions provide more information on market signals, incentives and the behaviour of market participants than private treaty sales. This paper therefore provides a theoretical framework for analysing revealed preference data generated from these auctions. We specifically focus on the analysis of the selling to asking price difference, the ‘bid-premium’. The bid-premium is shown to be affected by expectations of future price movements, market duration and high bidding frequency. The bid-premium reflects consumer's expectations, adapting to market conditions more promptly than asking price setting behaviour and final sale prices. The volatile conditions of the recent housing market bubble are fully reflected in the bid-premium, whereas the asking and sale prices are much less prone to rapid movements.