A HOUSING PRICE DYNAMICS MODEL USING HETEROGENEOUS INTERACTING AGENTS

• Published in: SIAM journal on applied mathematics 2018-01, Vol.78 (5), p.2648-2671
• Main Authors: DE OLIVEIRA ANTUNES, MANUELLA, DE ALMEIDA PRADO, FERNANDO PIGEARD
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0036-1399; 1095-712X
• DOI: 10.1137/17M1145215

The regulatory restraints on residential mortgage loans have a major impact on the housing market dynamics. Limits on the loan-to-value and debt-to-income ratio can be used to control credit availability, changing how agents behave and, therefore, how housing market price evolves. In this work, we propose a pricing model based on the heterogeneous agents theory, in which owners are influenced by historical housing demand, whereas buyers' behavior depends on credit availability, i.e., on regulatory restraints on residential mortgage loans. We show that the market price can be described by a Markov process that converges to a deterministic dynamical system as the number of agents increases. We establish the conditions under which the emerging system has a nontrivial equilibrium price, which depends on the regulatory restraints on mortgage loans, on buyers' reserve price, and on owners' memory and sensitivity to changes in the housing demand. Finally, we also show that changes in owners' memory and sensitivity to housing demand can lead to price oscillations or a Neimark-Sacker bifurcation, which are typically observed in bubble formation processes.