A mechanism for booms and busts in housing prices

The paper studies the dynamics of housing prices in a pure exchange overlapping generations framework a la Samuelson (1958) and Gale (1973), which is extended to include housing as a utility-yielding durable good and a credit sector. We completely characterize the equilibrium dynamics, which alternates between an expansive regime where leveraged borrowing increases housing prices, and a contractive regime where these variables decrease. Regime switches occur due to small but persistent income changes giving rise to boom-bust cycles in housing prices. Price deviations from fundamentals are caused by leveraged borrowing, and turn out to be fully welfare-neutral. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.