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The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it derives the optimal loan-to-value (LTV)-ratio for a mortgagor that maximizes the return to home equity when considering the capital structure of housing investment. Second, it analyses the demand-side contribution to mortgage market variability across monetary policy regimes.

The paper endogenizes both the relation between the LTV ratio and the mortgage rate and the relation between LTV and the rate of appreciation. When we consider LTV-variance and the demand-side contribution to mortgage market variability, three stylized regimes is considered.

The paper finds an intuitive ranking of the optimal LTV-ratios across regimes, and the optimal LTV-ratio peaks during a housing boom. When, however, monetary policy ignores asset inflation the demand-side contribution to market variability is highest during normal market conditions. Hence, there is a potentially hump-shaped relation between the risk exposure of individual mortgagors and the demand-side contribution to mortgage market variability.

The paper finds a potentially hump-shaped relation between the risk exposure of individual mortgagors and the demand-side contribution to mortgage market variability, which, to the best of our knowledge, is novel. The paper shows how macro-prudential and monetary policy are complementary tolls for preserving financial stability.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of home equity and the interplay between market segments for housing market developments. The intention is to show that it is not only the aggregate equity gain but also the distribution of equity gains between segments that matter for how shocks to income impact house prices.

The paper sets out a linear housing market model with three segments. Households trade up a housing ladder and link the three segments for owner-occupied housing. The up-trading is equity-induced. An expression for the house price index, which is related to the market segment prices both directly through the segment size and indirectly through a segment position on the housing ladder is derived. The author considers the price effects of shocks to income in four housing market regimes.

The heterogeneous housing market model shows how the interplay between segments impacts housing markets. When considering shocks to income, short-run deviations in the price-to-income (PTI) ratio compared to their long-run equilibrium due to equity-induced up-trading were found. The extent of PTI overshooting is related to the intensity of equity-induced up-trading between different segments. The market structure necessary to eliminate such overshooting is contingent on the distribution of equity gains between segments. Finally, the paper shows how the price effects of macroprudential interventions might be non-negligible when indirect effects are taken into account.

The linear housing market model with three market segments introduces a framework where the intensity of equity-induced up-trading in different market segments can be analyzed. This distributional aspect is, to the best of the author's knowledge, novel. The context-specific relation between housing market structure, equity-induced up-trading and short-run deviations in the PTI ratio provides a foundation for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to outline and examine the growing corpus of housing rights and assess their relevance and applicability to complex contemporary housing systems across the world.

The paper sets out the principal instruments and commentaries on housing rights developed by the United Nations, regional and other bodies. It assesses their relevance in the context of contemporary analysis of housing systems, organized and directed by networks of legal and other professionals within particular domains.

Housing rights instruments are accepted by all States across the world at the level of international law, national constitutions and laws. The findings suggest that there are significant gaps in the international law conception and framework of housing rights, and indeed, human rights generally, which create major obstacles for the effective implementation of these rights. There is a preoccupation with one element of housing systems, that of subsidized or social housing. However, effective housing rights implementation requires application at meso‐, micro‐ and macro‐levels of modern, dynamic housing systems as a whole. Epistemic communities of professionals develop and shape housing law and policy within these domains. The housing rights paradigm must be further fashioned for effective translation into contemporary housing systems.

The development of housing rights precedents, both within international and national law, is leading to a wide and diffuse corpus of legislation and case law. More research is needed on specific examples of effective coupling between housing rights and elements of housing systems.

This paper offers housing policy makers and lawyers an avenue into the extensive jurisprudence and writings on housing rights, which will inevitably become part of the lexicon of housing law across the world. It also highlights the limitations of housing rights implementation, but offers some new perspectives on more effective application of these rights.

The price-to-rent ratio is often regarded as an important indicator for measuring housing market imbalance and inefficiency. A central question is the extent to which house prices and rents form part of the same market and thus whether they respond similarly to parallel stimulus. If they are close proxies dynamically, then this provides valuable market intelligence, particularly where causal relationships are evident. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the relationship between market and rental pricing to uncover the price switching dynamics of residential real estate property types and whether the deviation between market rents and prices are integrated over both the long- and short-term.

This paper uses cointegration, Wald exogeneity tests and Granger causality models to determine the existence, if any, of cointegration and lead-lag relationships between prices and rents within the Belfast property market, as well as the price-to-rent ratios amongst its five main property sub-markets over the time period M4, 2014 to M12 2018.

The findings provide some novel insights in relation to the pricing dynamics within Belfast. Housing and rental prices are cointegrated suggesting that they tend to move in tandem in the long run. It is further evident that in the short-run, the price series Granger-causes that of rents inferring that sales price information unidirectionally diffuse to the rental market. Further, the findings on price-to-rent ratios reveal that the detached sector appears to Granger-cause those of other property types except apartments in both the short- and long-term, suggesting possible spill-over of pricing signals from the top-end to the lower strata of the market.

The importance of understanding the relationship between house prices and rental market performance has gathered momentum. Although the house price-rent ratio is widely used as an indicator of over and undervaluation in the housing market, surprisingly little is known about the theoretical relationship between the price-rent ratio across property types and their respective inter-relationships.

Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain have been in the spotlight of the recent economic crisis in Europe. With their economy strongly reliant on the construction industry, these countries have become widely exposed to the downturn in the property sector. This paper aims to examine residential property bubble dynamics in the period from 2003 to 2014 and investigate the role of financing conditions in the formation of these bubbles.

Building on the present value model in conjunction with the rational bubble assumption, the study applies the discounted cash flow (DCF) approach and applies weighted average cost of capital (WACC) to capture real estate bubble dynamics in the four countries. Reduced form vector autoregression models are used to examine the relationship between financing conditions and the bubble indicator.

The bubble indicator suggests that Spain and Ireland experienced a large rise in the bubble relative to moderate increases in Portugal and Greece in the period from 2003 up to the collapse in 2008. Our findings from the empirical analysis indicate that central bank policy shifts that impact interest rates and lending volumes on the domestic level have a significant and leading effect on the formation of residential property bubbles.

Only little research on real estate bubbles takes financial leverage into account. This paper bridges this gap by applying the WACC in the DCF model to identify real estate bubbles. While using a distinct bubble indicator, this analysis provides new insights into the linkage between financing conditions and real estate bubbles.

Emerging states confront staggering shortages in adequate housing stock. In response, governments have sought various supply-based solutions to mitigate growing housing deficits. While many of these mass housing efforts have not produced the desired outcome, the Republic of Korea’s Two Million Housing Drive (TMHD) was a comparatively successful intervention with its implementation from 1988 to 1992. The five-year initiative exceeded its objective with the construction of over 2.1 million units – of which two-thirds were built by the private sector. The purpose of this study is to analyse Korea’s relatively effective supply-based affordable housing approach and then extrapolate best practices and lessons learned with applications for real estate markets in the developing world. Comparative understanding of the TMHD can help promote greater access to adequate housing in the developing world, especially for the many who continue to live in impoverished conditions.

The research uses content-based and quantitative methods to analyze the case of the TMHD in Korea toward informing improvements in corresponding supply-based housing policies and programs in developing states.

While there were challenges with the TMHD, the program repositioned Korea’s urban housing market with greater access to affordable housing in cities for the lower-income and vulnerable. The TMHD enabled the subsequent effectiveness of demand-based housing policies.

There are research limitations in fully understanding the complex relationships between mass housing programs, economic growth and government policies. The abductive reasoning used in this case study enables in-depth analysis of the TMHD with generalizable inferences for middle-range theories with applications for emerging markets.

The experience of the TMHD can promote policy harmonization by helping optimize corresponding mass housing efforts in the developing world with the potential to similarly close quantitative housing deficits and expand access to adequate housing for lower-income and vulnerable households.

Deeper understanding of the TMHD can lead to reforms of other mass housing initiatives in emerging markets to make adequate housing more accessible and economical for the benefit of underserved segments of society.

The Korean experience with the TMHD can inform the optimization of other similar large-scale policies and programs seeking to sustainably overcome shortfalls in adequate housing that have become all too common in the developing world.

The purpose of this paper is to re‐appraise the role of the private renting in the housing system drawing on a review of public policies toward the sector in six countries. It re‐examines the adequacy of explanations about tenurial “competition” and the dynamics of tenurial change using a cross disciplinary perspective.

The paper critiques key explanations on the nature and type of competition between housing tenures, notably dual and unitary models, and the role of private renting in explanations of tenure dynamics. The paper also explores some of these ideas empirically by examining the changing role of the private renting relative to other tenures in a number of European countries and in Australia.

The paper expresses doubts about the potential for unitary markets to develop/continue as integrated markets because of the fundamental problems about ensuring continuing investment in the private rented sector and constraints on the maturation process, particularly where ownership of rental housing is diverse and small‐scale. The analysis suggests that housing tenures are quite fluid and with a general trend towards deregulation of private rents there is a blurring of the distinction between different types of rental systems.

The analysis suggests that it is critical to understand changes in private renting taking into account broader economic conditions, trade‐offs about housing consumption and investment, and public policy settings.

The analysis draws out theoretically, and explores empirically, the process of change in tenure relations by for the first time focusing on the role of private renting in these dynamics.

The elderly seem to be more subject to housing problems due to lower income, older age of the housing stock and lower mobility. Nonetheless, housing deprivation (HD) is commonly analysed amongst the general population. Less is known about the differences between age clusters, which seems to be a crucial issue in countries like Poland due to population ageing. What is more, the current literature usually analyses only the occurrence of HD, while also an accumulation of its indicators seems to be substantial. The aim of this article is to identify the differences in HD (its occurrence and accumulation) amongst elderly and non-elderly households and to diagnose the risk factors behind those phenomena.

The HD index was calculated and compared. Next, the multinomial logit models were used to assess risk factors of HD.

The study showed that, surprisingly, HD in Poland occurs more frequently amongst non-elderly households. The elderly ones suffered more from housing cost overburden, while non-elderly from the overpopulation. In large part, analysed risk factors had a stronger influence on housing conditions of the elderly than non-elderly households.

Social policy tools should focus on the situation of single elderly households, especially living in houses, often in villages. This group is particularly affected by problems with the quality of the dwelling and housing cost overburden.

In the paper, the occurrence and accumulation of HD indicators were analysed. The authors applied a methodological framework that is applicable to other European Union (EU) member states based on the EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data. It is possible to continue the research study and compare different economies.

From the perspective of housing affordability, Portugal is an interesting case study, considering that Portugal ranks 5th in terms of price-to-income ratio and has experienced, since 2015, a significant increase in real estate prices.

The provision of housing is a critical social development factor. With the growing worldwide urbanization and the demand pressure over real estate in many cities, the problem of affordability has gained increase attention by policy makers. Housing affordability is hardly a new topic from a literature perspective, but the recent post-pandemic worldwide inflation growth has re-centered affordability as key topic in the housing agenda. This paper provides a comprehensive overview on past literature and a detailed analysis on the Portuguese market at the municipal level, by analyzing the changes in housing affordability in recent years.

Despite this growth, overall, affordability has improved. The study also shows the importance of municipal-level analysis, given the significant geographical differences. The authors' study confirms that many municipalities, outside metropolitan areas, exhibit low levels of affordability. Nevertheless, markets with higher average real estate values tend to exhibit even lower affordability, outpacing the higher levels of income.

Previous studies have focused on affordability issues on a national or highly aggregated level or focusing only on the two largest metropolitan areas in the country. This paper provides a deeper understanding on the inequalities of housing affordability between Portuguese municipalities.

The authors’ empirical investigation attempts to identify the nexus between the economic well-being of Polish elderly households and their housing situation, which can be related to the impact of the mass privatization policy implemented in Poland in the early 1990s. The generation who benefited from the process at that time currently includes great majority of people at retirement age who are homeowners.

In the study, the authors employ micro data from the Polish Social Diagnosis household survey and analyze them in a multinomial logistic regression framework. They explore the nexus between both subjective and objective measures of income and housing circumstances.

The results imply that housing arrangements do not significantly differentiate Polish households in terms of their economic well-being when controlling for other sociodemographic factors. This may result from two independent, but possibly overlapping, reasons. The first is that housing circumstances are quite evenly distributed across elderly population as compared to income. This may be a direct effect of the “(socialist) state legacy,” as in the socialist era there was a strong focus on diminishing income and wealth inequalities in society. The second explanation is that better housing circumstances are not a sufficient means to improve the welfare of the elderly.

The study’s analysis is associated with little investigated area of the welfare effects of homeownership in the old age at the individual level. It explores this issue on the example of Poland, which is a typical representative of the group of post-socialist countries that share a common feature of “state legacy welfare” that is characterized by extensive mortgage-free homeownership.