The Housing Boom and the Decline in Mortgage Rates

Haoyang Liu (), David Lucca, Dean Parker and Gabriela Rays-Wahba

No 20210907, Liberty Street Economics from Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Abstract: During the pandemic, national home values and housing activity soared as mortgage rates declined to historic lows. Under the canonical “user cost” house price model, home values are held to be very sensitive to interest rates, especially at low interest rate levels. A calibration of this model can account for the house price boom with the observed decline in interest rates. But empirically, we find that home values are nowhere near as sensitive to interest rates as the user cost model predicts. This lower sensitivity is also found in prior economic research. Thus, the historical experience suggests that lower interest rates can only account for a tiny fraction of the pandemic house price boom. Instead, we find more scope for lower interest rates to explain the rise in housing activity, both sales and construction.

Keywords: home price; housing activity; interest rates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D14 E52 R31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-09-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-isf, nep-mac and nep-ure
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