<p>This dissertation presents the construction procedure of &ldquo;high-frequency&rdquo; daily measure of changes in housing valuations, and analyzes its return dynamics, as well as investigates its relationship to capital markets. The dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter introduces the house price index methodologies and housing transaction data, and reviews the related literature. The second chapter shows the construction and modeling of daily house price indexes and highlights the informational advantage of the daily indexes. The final chapter provides detailed empirical and theoretical investigations of housing index return volatilities. </p><p>Chapter 2 discusses the relationship of the housing market with the other markets, such as consumer good market and financial markets. Different housing price indexes and their construction methodologies are introduced, with emphases on the repeat sales model and S&P/Case Shiller Home Price Index. A detailed description of the housing transaction data I use in the dissertation is also provided in this chapter.</p><p>Chapter 3 is co-authored with Professor Tim Bollerslev and Professor Andrew Patton. We construct daily house price indexes for ten major U.S. metropolitan areas. Our calculations are based on a comprehensive database of several million residential property transactions and a standard repeat-sales method that closely mimics the procedure used in the construction of the popular monthly Case-Shiller house price indexes. Our new daily house price indexes exhibit dynamic features similar to those of other daily asset prices, with mild autocorrelation and strong conditional heteroskedasticity. The correlations across house price index returns are low at the daily frequency, but rise monotonically with the return horizon, and are commensurate with existing empirical evidence for existing monthly and quarterly house price series. Timely and accurate measures of house prices are important in a variety of applications, and are particularly valuable during times of turbulence, such as the recent housing crisis. To quantify the informational advantage of our daily index, we show that a relatively simple multivariate time series model for the daily house price index returns, explicitly allowing for commonalities across cities and GARCH effects, produces forecasts of monthly house price changes that are superior to various alternative forecast procedures based on lower frequency data.</p><p>Chapter 4 investigates the properties of housing index return volatilities. Similar to stock market volatility, housing volatilities are found to respond asymmetrically to negative and positive returns. A direct test of volatility on changes in loan-to-value ratio suggests that the observed volatility asymmetry does not stem from changes in degree of housing financial leverage, but could result from the risk premium carried by housing volatility, which is supported by a consumption-based asset pricing model with housing. Moreover, housing and stock volatilities are found to be positively correlated from a set of predictive regressions based on realized variances of housing and stock markets, in which higher (lower) volatility in one market will be followed by higher (lower) volatility in the other. Finally, housing and stock cross-sectional return dispersions are shown to contain useful information in predicting both within-market and cross-market realized volatilities.</p> / Dissertation

The historical long-term volatility and return on investment in single-family dwellings was investigated and compared with investments in equity, bonds and T-bill markets. Total return index for equity and fixed-income security indices were obtained from available sources, of course, a proper index for measurement of long-term changes in house prices was unavailable. In an effort to measure the house price changes, a relatively homogeneous pool of houses in the downtown Toronto area was selected and its price tracked over the study period of 44 years. Inflation rate affects the return of investments in everything similarly therefore this was not considered in the calculations. Results of comparing the investment of cash in one's family home versus in other investment vehicles showed that the ratio of investment growth to its volatility for a single-family house exceeded the ratios for other investments by a large margin.

The historical long-term volatility and return on investment in single-family dwellings was investigated and compared with investments in equity, bonds and T-bill markets. Total return index for equity and fixed-income security indices were obtained from available sources, of course, a proper index for measurement of long-term changes in house prices was unavailable. In an effort to measure the house price changes, a relatively homogeneous pool of houses in the downtown Toronto area was selected and its price tracked over the study period of 44 years. Inflation rate affects the return of investments in everything similarly therefore this was not considered in the calculations. Results of comparing the investment of cash in one's family home versus in other investment vehicles showed that the ratio of investment growth to its volatility for a single-family house exceeded the ratios for other investments by a large margin.

Price trends on the Swedish housing market has risen sharply in recent decades and is at the moment up to the highest price level ever. The sharp price movements have opened up for discussion about a possible housing bubble. To prevent this the Riksbank can change the repo rate, which in turn aects the lenders' lending rates. Finansinspektionen introduced in autumn 2010, a mortgage cap which means that the house will be mortgaged to a maximum of 85 percent of its market value. The purpose of this was to cool the housing market and prevent the unsustainable development of household debt. The purpose of this study is to examine in particular the repo rates and the mortgage caps eect on house prices in Sweden. Although other variables that aect supply and demand in the housing market from a macroeconomic perspective will be included in the model, such as GDP, unemployment and the nancial crisis of 2008. This study has been done by using a quantitative analysis, consisting of time series analysis. The results conrm all the investigated variables expected impact on house prices. As for the repo rate and the mortgage cap the results showed that these have a negative eect on house prices in Sweden. / Prisutvecklingen pa den Svenska bostadsmarknaden har stigit kraftigt under de senaste decennierna och ar just nu uppe i den hogsta prisnivan nagonsin. Den kraftiga prisutvecklingen har oppnat for diskussion om en eventuell bostadsbubbla. For att motverka detta kan Riksbanken andra reporantan som i sin tur paverkar kreditgivarnas utlaningsranta. Finansinspektionen inforde under hosten 2010 ett bolanetak som innebar att bostaden hogst ska belanas till 85 procent av marknadsvardet. Detta for att kyla bostadsmarknaden och motverka den ohallbara utvecklingen av hushallens skuldsattning. Syftet med denna studie ar att framforallt undersoka reporantans och bolanetakets eekt pa smahuspriser i Sverige. Aven andra variabler som paverkar utbudet och efterfragan pa bostadsmarknaden ur ett makroekonomiskt perspektiv kommer att inga i modellen, till exempel BNP, arbetsloshet och nanskrisen 2008. Detta genomfors med hjalp av en kvantitativ analys, bestaende av tidsserieanalys. Resultatet bekraftar alla undersokta variablers vantade eekter pa smahuspriser. Vad galler reporantan och bolanetaket sa visade resultatet pa att dessa har negativ eekt pa smahuspriser i Sverige.

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The first part of the dissertation examines the effects of rate regulation, compulsory insurance laws, the wealth of individuals, premiums, and claim costs on insurance affordability and insurance purchase as measured by the ratio of uninsured and underinsured motorist claims frequencies to property damage liability claim frequencies in the US personal auto insurance industry. Because regulations which are intended to let high-risk drivers purchase insurance may discourage low-risk drivers from purchasing insurance, the effect of the regulations should be examined from the perspective of both high-risk and low-risk drivers. Literature using only uninsured motorist claim data finds that the effect of rate regulation, compulsory insurance laws, and residual market is significant on insurance affordability from the perspective of high-risk drivers. However, this study using both uninsured and underinsured motorist claim data demonstrates that the effect is weaker or not significant in increasing insurance purchase in general. The second part of the dissertation tests the sustainability of the Korean reverse mortgage program, reflecting the house price indices in different regions. Literature generally uses aggregate house price indices and consequently underestimates the risks that result from more volatile individual house prices than averaged house prices. This paper predicts house price indices by region and finds that the Korean reverse mortgage program would have losses at 25th percentile or 30th percentile, in contrast to the results of the simulation using the nationwide house price index, which show that the Korean reverse mortgage program is sustainable at 95% confidence level. This paper also concludes that longevity risk is not a big concern in the reverse mortgage program as long as interest rates are low and house prices are high. However, longevity risk inflates the effect of high interest rates and low house prices on the reverse mortgage program. / Business Administration/Risk Management and Insurance

[Truncated abstract] This thesis examines informational efficiency and price discovery processes within the Perth housing market for the period 1988-2000 by utilising a rich source of Western Australian Valuer General’s Office (VGO) data. Fama’s (1970) classification of market efficiency as potentially weak form, semi-strong, or strong form has been a dominant paradigm in tests of market efficiency in many asset markets. While there are some parallels, the results of tests in this thesis suggest there are also limitations in applying this paradigm to housing markets. The institutional structure of housing markets dictates that a deeper recognition of important housing market characteristics is required. Efficiency in housing markets is desirable in that if prices provide accurate signals for purchase or disposition of real estate assets this will facilitate the correct allocation of scarce financial resources for housing services. The theory of efficient markets suggests that it is desirable for information diffusion processes in a large aggregate housing market to facilitate price corrections. In an efficient housing market, these processes can be observed and will enable housing units to be exchanged with an absence of market failure in all price and location segments. Throughout this thesis there is an emphasis on disaggregation of the Perth housing market both by price and location criteria. Results indicate that the Perth housing market is characterised by varying levels of informational inefficiency in both price and location segments and there are some important pricing-size influences.

Housing is both a durable good and an investment vehicle, which makes it importantin people’s daily life aswell as for a nation’s economy. This thesis innovatively applies the Sharpe ratio on evaluating the performance of the US residentialhousing market within the time period from 2005:Q1 to 2019:Q3, andinvestigates how this performance would react upon macroeconomic shocks,including sudden changes in GDP growth rate and personal income growthrate, by establishing a vector auto-regression model with the lag order of four.The main results are that: (1)in the long run, direct residential investments are not significantly more profitable than treasury bills but not disappointing compared to the market portfolio of Dow Jones Industrial Average; (2)the performance of residential investments seem to slightly and positively co-move withGDP and personal income growth rate; (3)the long-term impacts that sudden GDP and personal income growths have on the performance seem inconspicuous and tend to mitigate within about three years and (4) limited evidence supports the hypothesis that current housing market performance can help predictfuture GDP growth rate. Based on housing’s two purpose of consumption andinvestment and the empirical results showing that direct investments on residentialproperties have similar risk-adjusted return level to short-term treasurybills, I suggest that financially feasible households purchase their own houseinstead of renting for a long time, and that speculative investors avoid puttingmoney in residential properties unless they have access to inside information. / Bostäder kan betraktas både som en hållbar vara och som ett investeringsinstrument.De är essentiella för människors vardag och har en viktig roll förett lands ekonomi. Denna avhandling använder innovativt Sharpe-förhållandet för att utvärdera hur den amerikanska bostadsmarknaden presterade under perioden2005: kvartal 1 till 2019: kvartal 3. Den försöker även undersöka om denna prestation påverkas av makroekonomiska chocker inklusive plötsligaförändringar i BNP-tillväxttakt och personliga inkomsttillväxthastighet. Detta görs genom att upprätta en vektor autoregression modell med en fördröjningsordningför fyra. De viktigaste resultaten är att: (1) på långsikt är direktabostadsinvesteringar inte betydligt mer lönsamma än statsskuldväxlar dock är det hellre inte en besvikelse jämfört med en marknadsportföljen av Dow JonesIndustrial Average; (2) Prestationen av bostadsinvesteringar verkar vara svagt och samverkar positivit både med BNP och tillväxttakten för personinkomst.(3) De långsiktiga effekterna av plötsliga tillväxter av BNP och personliga inkomster har på utvecklingen verkar vara vaga och tenderar att mildra inomcirka tre år och (4) begränsade bevis stöder hypotesen om att nuvarande bostadsmarknadsresultat kan bidra till att förutsäga framtida BNP-tillväxttakten.Baserat på bostädernas två syften inom konsumtion och investeringar, visar deempiriska resultaten att direkta investeringar i bostadsfastigheter har en liknande riskjusterad avkastningsnivå som kortfristiga statsskuldväxla. Därför föreslår jag att ekonomisk stabila hushåll borde köpa ett eget hus istället för att hyraunder en lång tid, och att spekulativa investerare borde undvika att satsa pengar inom bostadsfastigheter såvida de inte har tillgång till insider-information.