Rushing into the American Dream? House Prices Growth and the Timing of Homeownership

Sumit Agarwal, Luojia Hu and Xing Huang

Review of Finance, 2016, vol. 20, issue 6, 2183-2218

Abstract: We use the New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel data set to empirically examine how past house price growth influences the timing of homeownership. We find that the median individual in metropolitan areas with the highest quartile house price growth becomes a homeowner 5 years earlier than that in areas with the lowest quartile house price growth. The result is consistent with a life cycle housing-demand model in which high past price growth increases expectations of future price growth thus accelerating home purchases at young ages. We show that extrapolative expectations formed by homebuyers are a necessary channel to explain the result.

JEL-codes: D12 D14 D91 R21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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