United States: Selected Issues

International Monetary Fund

No 2008/256, IMF Staff Country Reports from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: This Selected Issues paper summarizes estimates of the gap between current housing prices and their equilibrium levels in the United States. It examines short-term dynamics of price adjustment. Reflecting uncertainties about how to analyze underlying housing price trends, two approaches are used in the paper to estimate the extent of housing-price overvaluation. Both techniques yield similar results, revealing considerable overvaluation in the last few years, which has not been fully corrected yet. The gap between actual and equilibrium housing prices seems to matter only through its medium-term impact on the inventory-to-sales ratio.

Keywords: ISCR; CR; housing-price bust; home-price dynamics; equity price; quarter-on-quarter home-price appreciation; house-price bust; price movement; housing price; OFHEO housing-price index; housing-price effects; housing crisis; Credit; Housing prices; Housing; Bank credit; Financial statements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21
Date: 2008-07-30
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=22214 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfscr:2008/256

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Staff Country Reports from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().