A Report On House Prices Essay

The United States will always recall autumn of 2008 as a time of financial terror, and rightly so. After the stock market crash, millions of Americans, previously unaware of the brewing crisis, lost their businesses, their jobs, and their homes. Even now, we still are in a period of recovery from the economic turmoil of that year.

Leading up to my decision to come to Kansas state university, a place every kid in Kansas wants to come to, I finally decided it was the right university for myself after I got accepted in the spring of my senior semester in high school. After I started considering it farther, I realized that it was going to cost a lot of money to attend a four-year division one university. I immediately started looking for ways to try and save every dollar that I could, so I could graduate with less debt.

Meanwhile, yearly house price inflation rates in the top 20 cities are running in line with the national trend. The cities with the highest rates of increase are Seattle (+12%), Portland (+10%) and Dallas (+9%). Lower tier property prices appear to be more volatile than their high end counterparts in both Seattle and Portland. Meanwhile, the three cities with the lowest rates of house price inflation are New York (+3%), Washington (+4%) and Cleveland (+5%). Furthermore, rising house prices appear to be having an adverse impact on affordability. According to the National Association of Realtors, rising prices are offsetting higher disposable incomes and stable mortgage rates, and affordability has consequently been declining since January 2015. Partly driving the increase in prices is a lack of available supply of existing single family homes for sale. The number of months’ of unsold inventory was just below 4 in March and availability has been gradually falling since 2014. Additionally, there is a relatively tight supply situation for new single family homes for sale, which is also helping to support prices.

Macroeconomics is an excellent tool for the analysis of the housing industry as something like a capital good, as a home is considered to be, cannot easily be studied in a short-term platform. Real estate is a good that costs several times more than an average persons annual income, in the United States that number is typically 7 times as much, and in the United Kingdom that number is 14 times as much. Several factors of both supply and demand directly impact the housing market on a macroeconomic scale. (Business Economics, 1)

In recent years, what can only be described as extremely rapid growth has occurred in the London property market. With a present average house price of £458,283 compared to £179,492 for the rest of England and Wales (Land Registry, 2015, pp. 3-5), London is an interesting case study for analysis due to a consistent 9.8% ten year growth average (Knight Frank , 2014). Something demonstrated in Figure 1, which shows property price percentage increase from the twelve months prior to December 2014. With such levels of growth, it is easy to conceptualise London’s attractiveness to investors, particularly that of foreign origin from less stable countries.

In order to meet the study objectives, in addition to the case study, a semi-structured interview was conducted using non-random sampling. As respondents of the interview had to have particular characteristics such as ability to value property and knowledge about the property market, estate agents were contacted. A total of 7 interviews were conducted with estate agents in the West Hampstead/Kilburn area. The interviews lasted approximately 10 minutes. The participants were as follows:

The current housing market is experiencing another large, daunting bubble that I fear is leading to another burst and market crash. The “Baby Boomer” Generation and the “Millennial” Generation are currently experiencing a great disparity gap between the two of them, both in pay and in purchasing power which directly affects the housing market. As the Baby Boomer Generation begins to retire and move on from where they currently live, the housing market will suddenly experience a boom in available housing. The issue then becomes that the Millennial Generation does not currently have the economic buying power to purchase these houses. This issue is currently visible in the Bay Area where housing is at an all time high. Houses are currently being listed as Baby Boomers want to move out of the higher cost of living areas into lower cost of living areas when they retire, but their current listing prices are prohibitively expensive at the current wages the new buying generation makes. These houses are being listed for longer periods of time, many homes listed over a year, with no successful bids.

Housing demand includes household growth, real incomes, real wealth, tax concessions to both owner-occupied and rental housing, concessions to first homebuyers, returns on alternative investments, cost and availability of finance for housing and the institutional structure affecting housing finance provision (Yates, 2008). The growth in the number of households and in real income results in the increased pressure on housing demand.

In the first quarter of 2006 the rent price ratio had its lowest point (between 2000 and 2014) at 3.11%. The rent/price ratio rose to its highest point in 2012.1 with the ratio amounting for 4.66%. A low rent/price ratio is caused by decreasing rent, increasing house prices and stable rent, or a combination of both1. As the rent/price ratio is highly dependent on housing prices, the housing crisis around 2007-2009 had a major impact on rent prices as well. The economic background that led to the housing bubble is diverse. First, the 2000 stock market crash resulted in many investors withdrawing from the stock market. At the same time rising property prices since the early 90s seemed to be an attractive alternative to invest. Homeownership increased

Multiple reasons exist for the the lack of affordable housing. On the demand side these include population growth and increased migration to urban areas, easily accessible housing finance, tax incentives and a “strong cultural preference for owner-occupied detached houses”. On the supply side, affordability problems are exacerbated by inflexible and slow responses to the need for new housing stock, lack of infrastructure and generally inefficient planning processes and development assessment by local governments.

Last week we received a number of reports related to housing. The Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index for June rose to 4.50 percent as compared to May’s reading of 4.40 percent. Denver, Colorado was the only city to post double-digit year-over-year growth. The index indicated national home prices grew by five percent year-over-year in June. When comparing increases in home prices and wage increases, America has a serious problem. Wages are increasing on average at about 2.0 percent, while home pricing are over twice the rate, making home affordability harder to achieve.

The old illusionist’s trick of misdirection has been around for centuries and even more so today it is very easy to be distracted and not focused on what we should be focused on. House prices are being driven by supply and demand which is the case with any product. However one possible influencing factor encouraging the price hike is the very thing that is only meant to reflect the value for administrative purposes not push it up. I am talking about the council capital valuations. By setting a valuation for a property that often becomes an anchor point for everyone’s perception of that property’s market value whether that CV is correct or not. The Council website does not help and is very confusing on this unless read carefully.

For the past several years, the housing market has been mutually beneficial for both buyer and seller. The cost of real estate has risen but has maintained or gained value. People who have owned their home for quite awhile are seeing astronomical amounts of money to be made off the sale of their home, and so the market has been inundated with housing for sale. It leads us to wonder whether this boom is heading for the crash. Is now still a good time to buy? If so, what type of property will continue to gain value? Will new buyers end up stuck in their home as the value drops? As a homeowner, I am nervous about the state of the real estate market. This is not the house my family wants to call its home forever, but could we get stuck here? Yes, we could. If the housing market drops, then so will the amount of money we could potentially make off the sale of this house. If it drops enough then it would be possible to end up owing money upon the sale. Unless you are independently wealthy, you hope to make money off the sale of the home to help finance the purchase of the next home. Real estate agents will tell you that now is still a good time to buy. While it is speculated that the market will drop within the next year or two, if you are willing to sit on your new purchase for several years, an upswing will occur again. There is never any guarantee that you will recoup the money paid for and put into a home. If you intend to purchase a home soon, it would be a good idea to

Interest rates have a major economic impact on the real estate market. Interest rates directly affect property sales. Residential property realizes the greatest affect as interest rates have a considerable influence on a homebuyer’s capability to purchase a new property. The customer is affected when there are significant increases or decreases in interest rates. Declining interest rates lower the costs of obtaining a mortgage; this in turn creates higher demand for homes, and pushes home prices up. Conversely, high interest rates increase the costs to obtain a mortgage; these increases lower the demand for homes, which creates a decline in home prices. (Stammers, 2016)

In this report, the question “How much of the changes in the median selling price of homes in a city can be explained by the changes in median income of that city?” is answered. Home ownership is an important aspect of one’s life stages, and home prices are determined by demand and supply. The demand curve is affected by the one’s income, such that as one’s income increases, one is more willing to pay a higher price for the same quantity of goods (Baye & Prince, 2014). However, there are many other factors that might affect the demand curve, e.g. no. of children, in the household, the perceived quality of education in the school district, or the number of job positions (filled or open) around the city. According to Burda