Stabilising House Prices: the Role of Housing Futures Trading

Arzu Uluc

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 2018, vol. 56, issue 4, No 4, 587-621

Abstract: Abstract This study investigates the effects of housing futures trading on housing demand, house price volatility and housing bubbles in a theoretical framework. The baseline model is an application of the De long, Shleifer, Summers and Waldman (1990) model of noise traders to the housing market, when the risky asset is housing. This adds new features to the model as households receive utility from housing services and cannot short-sell houses. The existence of noise traders in the housing market creates uncertainty about house prices, causes prices to deviate away from their fundamental values, and leads to a distortion in housing consumption. To investigate the impact of housing derivatives trading on the housing market, a new financial instrument, housing futures, is introduced into the baseline model. Housing futures trading affects house price stability through three channels: by (i) enabling households to disentangle their housing consumption decisions from investment decisions; (ii) allowing short-selling; and (iii) attracting an additional set of traders (pure speculators) looking for portfolio diversification opportunities. The results show that, for a large set of admissible parameter values, housing futures trading decreases the volatility of house prices and increases the welfare of households and investors.

Keywords: Housing derivatives market; Speculation; House price volatility; Short-selling; Noise traders (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: Stabilising house prices: the role of housing futures trading (2015)
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DOI: 10.1007/s11146-017-9606-3

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