BLS WORKING PAPERS 

 U.S. Department of Labor 

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Office of Prices and Living Conditions 

Run-up in the House Price-Rent Ratio: How Much Can Be

Explained by Fundamentals?

Kamila Sommer, Georgetown University, FRB Minneapolis

Paul Sullivan, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Randal Verbrugge, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Working Paper 441

June 2011

All views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Run-up in the House Price-Rent Ratio: How Much

Can Be Explained by Fundamentals?y

Kamila Sommer Paul Sullivan

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Randal Verbrugge

Bureau of Labor Statistics

May 2011

Abstract

This paper studies the joint dynamics of real house prices and rents over the past

decade. We build a dynamic equilibrium stochastic life cycle model of housing tenure

choice with fully speciÖed markets for homeownership and rental properties, and endogenous house prices and rents. Houses are modeled as discrete-size durable goods

which provide shelter services, confer access to collateralized borrowing, provide sizeable tax advantages, and generate rental income for homeowners who choose to become

landlords. Mortgages are available, but home-buyers must satisfy a minimum down

payment requirement, and home sales and purchases are subject to lumpy adjustment

costs. Lower interest rates, relaxed lending standards, and higher incomes are shown to

account for over one-half of the increase in the U.S. house price-rent ratio between 1995

and 2005, and to generate the pattern of rapidly growing house prices, sluggish rents,

increasing homeownership, and rising household indebtedness observed in the data.

The model highlights the importance of accounting for equilibrium interactions between the markets for owned and rented property when analyzing the housing market.

These general equilibrium e§ects can either magnify or reverse the partial equilibrium

e§ects of changes in fundamentals on house prices, rents, and homeownership.

Acknowledgement: We would like to thank Orazio Attanasio, Je§ Campbell, Christopher Carroll, Morris Davis, Timothy Erickson, Carlos Garriga, Martin Gervais, Jonathan Heathcote, Mark Huggett, Maria

Luengo-Prado, Ellen McGrattan, Makoto Nakajima, Francois Ortalo-Magne, Victor Rios-Rull, Don Schlagenhauf, Kjetil Storesletten, and participants of the 2010 NBER Sumer Institute Aggregate Implications of

Microeconomic Consumption Behavior Workshop and the 2010 HUML Conference at the Federal Reserve

Bank of Chicago for helpful comments and suggestions. All errors, misinterpretations and omissions are

ours. All the analysis, views, and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not

reáect the views or policies of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

yCorresponding authors: Sommer (kv28@georgetown.edu) and Sullivan (sullivan.paul.joseph@bls.gov)
1 Introduction

The sharp increase and subsequent collapse in U.S. house prices over the past decade has

been well documented. While real house prices rose by only 3.7 percent between 1985 and

1995, they increased by 46 percent between 1995 and 2005. In sharp contrast, real rents

remained virtually unchanged during the recent increase in house prices, so that in 2006

the house price-rent ratio peaked at approximately forty percent above its level in the year

2000 (Figure 1). Over the same time period, the real interest rate and minimum down

payment required to purchase a home reached historically low levels. 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 and market fundamentals such as interest rates and down payment requirements.

This paper bridges the gap in the existing literature by quantitatively studying the joint

dynamics of endogenously determined house prices and rents in a dynamic equilibrium model

of housing tenure choice with fully speciÖed markets for both homeownership and rental

properties. We show that approximately one-half of the run-up in the U.S. house price-rent

ratio between 1995 and 2005 can be explained as the equilibrium response of the housing

market to changes in fundamentals.

To study the impact of changes in interest rates and down payment requirements on

house prices and rents, we build a stochastic life cycle Aiyagari-Bewley-Huggett economy

with incomplete markets, uninsurable idiosyncratic earnings risk, exogenous down payment

requirements and interest rates, and endogenous house prices and rents. We depart from a

representative-agent framework to build an economy where ñas in the data ñ renters and

homeowners di§er in terms of income and wealth. Building on the idea of houses as durable,

lumpy consumption goods that provide shelter services and confer access to collateralized

borrowing, but can also be used as rental investments, we endogenize the buy vs. rent

decision and also allow homeowners to lease out their properties in the rental market. The

supply of rental housing is thus determined endogenously within the model, as homeowners

weigh their utility from shelter space against rental income, taking into account the tax

implications of their decisions. Mortgages are available to Önance purchases of housing,

but home-buyers must satisfy a minimum down payment requirement. The recent housing

literature argues that housing market frictions such as non-convex transaction costs, tax

1
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005

60

70

80

90

100

110

120

130

140

150

160

Year

Index (1990=100)

Panel (A)

FHFA House Price Index (real)

BLS Rent Index (real)

Price−Rent Ratio

1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005

−10

−5

0

5

10

15

20

25

Year

Growth Rate (%)

Panel (B)

FHFA House Price Index (real)

BLS Rent Index (real)

1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

Year

Household Liabilities−to−Income Ratio

Panel (C)

Total Debt to Income

Home Mortgage to Income

Consumer Credit to Income

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005

55

60

65

70

75

Year

Homeownership Rate (%)

Panel (D)

Homeownership Rate

Notes: Variables in Panel (C) are from NIPA. Homeownership rate in Panel (D) is from the Census tables.

Figure 1: FHFA House Price Index and BLS Rent of Primary Residence Index

advantages to homeownership, and higher depreciation of rental properties relative to owneroccupied properties are likely to be important determinants of housing demand and rental

supply. We therefore incorporate these frictions into our model economy to quantitatively

assess their importance in determining the price-rent ratio.1 Both house prices and rents are

determined in equilibrium through clearing of housing and rental markets.

Our model is the Örst model of the housing market that allows the rental supply to be

determined endogenously by the optimizing investment decisions of heterogenous households,

and where two distinct relative prices ñrents and house prices ñare determined in equilibrium

via market clearing. The calibrated model is therefore uniquely well suited to study the

impact of macroeconomic factors on the equilibrium price-rent ratio in a steady state, and

along a deterministic transitional path between steady states. Our rational expectations

model of the housing market demonstrates that the rising incomes, historically low interest

1Appendix A highlights the important role that these features of the housing market play in determining

demand for housing and rental properties, as well as rental supply.

2
rates, and easing of down payment requirements observed in the data can explain about

one-half of the increase in U.S. house prices between 1995 and 2005.2In addition, the model

predicts that changes in these factors will have only a small positive e§ect on equilibrium

rents, a result that is consistent with the U.S. data. The price and rent dynamics generated

by the model coincide with increases in the homeownership rate and household debt-toincome ratio that are also similar to the actual developments in the U.S. housing market

between 1995 and 2005.3

The key mechanism in the model generating the run-up in the equilibrium price-rent

ratio in response to changed macroeconomic conditions is that the supply of rental property

available on the rental market and the demand for rental units by tenants are endogenously

determined jointly with the demand for housing. When the mortgage interest rate and

required down payment fall, the demand for rental units by tenants falls because households

switch from renting to owning as homeownership becomes more a§ordable. Simultaneously,

the supply of rental property from landlords increases because investment in rental property

becomes more attractive relative to the alternative of holding bank deposits as the interest

rate falls.4 As a result, the equilibrium rent falls. At the same time, the demand for housing

increases because more households can a§ord to purchase homes, and existing homeowners

can a§ord larger homes. Given that the stock of housing is Öxed, the equilibrium house price

rises. Turning to the e§ects of income on the housing market, we Önd that an increase in

income that is symmetric across all wage groups leads to a proportional increase in house

prices and rents, but has little impact on the price-rent ratio.

Our analysis of the recent housing boom stands in marked contrast to the predictions

of widely used models of the housing market that are based on a representative rental Örm.

In these models, the house price-rent ratio is inversely related to the interest rate through

2A large body of empirical literature has investigated the relationship between house prices and macroeconomics aggregates. For example, regression analysis by by Englund and Ioannides (1997), Malpezzi (1999),

Muellbauer and Murphy (1997), Muellbauer and Murphy (2008), and Otrok and Terrones (2008) show that

real interest rates, income, income growth, and Önancial liberalization have a statistically signiÖcant e§ect

on the dynamics of real house prices.

3The total household debt to disposable income ratio has increased from 80 percent in 1985 to 93 percent

in 1995 and to a whopping 141 percent in 2007. At the same time, the U.S. homeownership rate, initially

áat at 64 percent between 1983 and 1995, rose to 69 percent by 2005.

4

In the United States, the buy-to-let markets have grown substantially since the mid-1990s (OECD, 2006).

The portion of sales attributable to such investors has risen sharply since the late 1990s, reaching around 15

percent of all home purchases in 2004, much higher than the pre-1995 average of 5 percent (Morgan Stanley,

2005).

3
a simple arbitrage condition (Gervais (2002), Nakajima (2008)). These models predict a

doubling of the house price-rent ratio in response to the 50 percent reduction in interest

rates observed during the recent housing boom. Our model, which allows for an endogenous

rental supply response to changes in credit conditions that is absent from existing models,

predicts a 20 percent increase in the price-rent ratio, which is more in line with the data

shown in Figure 1.

The model provides a number of additional insights about the mechanisms that jointly

determine house prices and rents. Both the house price and rent are relatively inelastic with

respect to the down payment requirement, so a lessening of credit constraints cannot by itself

account for the run-up in house prices observed in recent years. The key to understanding

the small e§ect of decreases in the required down payment on equilibrium house prices is

to realize that changes in equilibrium house prices from this source are primarily driven by

renters entering the housing market when down payment requirements are relaxed. Since

renters are marginal in terms of income and wealth, the increase in housing demand relative

to the entire market demand for housing is small, so the resulting house price increase is

small. The corresponding increase in household borrowing as credit constraints are relaxed is

skewed toward low-income households, as poorer households gain access to mortgage markets

and borrow large amounts relative to their labor income to Önance their home purchases.

Conversely, the model predicts that falling interest rates create large increases in house

prices but reduced homeownership. Cheap credit reduces the cost of mortgage Önancing,

boosting household willingness and ability to purchase big properties and to Önance them

using large mortgages. At the same time, a lower interest rate lowers the return on household savings, making it more di¢ cult to save up for a down payment ñitself now higher,

thanks to higher house prices ñand prompting investors to seek higher returns by becoming

landlords. The equilibrium e§ects are higher house prices, higher rental supply, and a lower

homeownership rate.

This paper builds on the growing body of literature which studies housing using quantitative macroeconomics models with heterogenous households. These papers include DÌaz and

Luengo-Prado (2008), Chambers, Garriga, and Schlagenhauf (2009a, 2009b, 2009c), Chatterjee and Eyigungor (2009), Favilukis, Ludvigson, and Van Nieuwerburgh (2011), Kiyotaki,

Michaelides, and Nikolov (2008), Nakajima (2008), RÌos-Rull and S·nchez-Marcos (2008),

Ortalo-MagnÈ and Rady (2006), and Iacoviello and Neri (2007). The studies most closely

4
related to ours are Chambers, Garriga and Schlagenhauf (2009a, 2009b, 2009c) and DÌaz

and Luengo-Prado (2008) in terms of the model, and Chatterjee and Eyigungor (2009), Favilukis, Ludvigson, and Van Nieuwerburgh (2011), and Kiyotaki, Michaelides, and Nikolov

(2008) in terms of the theme.

DÌaz and Luengo-Prado (2008) build a partial equilibrium economy with a number of

realistic features such as collateralized borrowing, non-convex adjustment costs, taxes, and

idiosyncratic earnings risk. However, in their model, housing and rental markets exist only

insofar as both house prices and rents follow exogenous processes. Chambers, Garriga and

Schlagenhauf (2009a, 2009b, 2009c) document that the vast majority of U.S. rental property is owned by households instead of Örms, and develop a model where rental property is

supplied by households who choose to become landlords as a result of optimal investment

strategies.5 However, the authors allow rents but not house prices to be determined endogenously within their model.6 This paper adopts the structure of rental markets from Chambers, Garriga, and Schlagenhauf (2009a), but also allows both house prices and rents to be

determined in an equilibrium.

Turning to the dynamics of the price-rent ratio, Kiyotaki, Michaelides, and Nikolov (2008)

brieáy explore the equilibrium relationship between the price of housing equity and rents in

a frictionless model where housing shares ñthe only asset in the economy ñcan be costlessly

adjusted every period, and the relative holding of housing equity with respect to the size of

the shelter services consumed determines the homeownership status of the household: tenant

or homeowner. Production capital can be costlessly transformed to provide shelter services,

so that rent is determined as a factor price of this production capital. Favilukis, Ludvigson,

and Van Nieuwerburgh (2011) study the housing boom in a two sector RBC model where

áuctuations in the price-rent ratio are driven by changing risk premia in response to aggregate

shocks. However, their model does not actually include a rental market. Instead, they impute

rent from a distribution of the marginal rate of substitution (MRS) between homeownersí

consumption of nondurable goods and housing. Our model instead focuses on modeling the

micro-foundations of the housing and rental markets and takes interest rates as exogenous.

5Using data from the Property Owners and Managers Survey, Chambers, Garriga, and Schlagenhauf

(2009c) use micro data evidence to document that a vast majority of U.S. rental property is owned by

households, rather than Örms. Namely, 86 percent of the U.S. rental property is owned by individual investors

(or husband and wife), and fully 94 percent of all rental property is owned by non-institutional investors. The

remainder is controlled by real estate corporations, other corporations, non-proÖt organizations, or churches.

6However, other equilibrium objects, such as interest rates, appear in these models.

5
Allowing both house prices and rents to be determined in equilibrium in interrelated, but

distinct, rental and housing markets reveals that understanding the rental supply response

to changes in credit conditions is crucial to understanding the recent housing boom. Lastly,

Chatterjee and Eyigungor (2009) study the e§ects of changes in housing supply on house

price dynamics and mortgage default using a calibrated model with a representative stand-in

rental Örm. They study the housing market bust, while we focus on the behavior of U.S.

house prices and rents during the housing market boom of 1995-2005.

This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we develop a quantitatively rich stochastic life cycle model of the housing market with fully speciÖed household choices with respect

to consumption, saving, and homeownership, and provide the rationale for our modeling

assumptions. Section 3 deÖnes the equilibrium of the economy, while Section 4 describes the

modelís estimation and discusses the Öt of the benchmark model. In Section 5, we discuss

predictions of the benchmark model, and reconcile these with the actual dynamics of house

prices and rents in the U.S. data. Section 6 studies the transition path of the economy

between steady states.

2 The Model Economy

We consider an Aiyagari-Bewley-Huggett style economy with heterogeneous households.

Households derive utility from nondurable consumption and from shelter services which

are obtained either via renting or through ownership. Households supply labor inelastically, receive an idiosyncratic uninsurable stream of earnings in the form of endowments,

and make joint decisions about their consumption of nondurable goods and shelter services,

house size, mortgage size, and holdings of deposits. Young households start their life cycle

as renters with zero asset holdings and have limited access to credit because all borrowing

in the model is tied to ownership of housing. Idiosyncratic earnings shocks can be partially

insured through precautionary savings (deposits), or through collateralized borrowing in the

form of liquid home equity lines of credit (HELOCs). Households prefer homeownership to

renting, in part because of the tax advantages to homeownership embedded in the U.S. tax

code, but may be forced to rent due to the down payment requirement and the Önancing cost

of homeownership. Purchases and sales of housing are subject to transaction costs and the

6
housing stock is subject to depreciation. An important feature of our model is that houses

can be used as a rental investment: they provide a source of income when leased out, and tax

deductions available to landlords can be used to o§set non-rental income and rental property

related depreciation expenses. House prices and rents are determined in equilibrium through

clearing of housing and rental markets.

2.1 Demography and Labor Income

The model economy is inhabited by a continuum of overlapping generations households

with identical preferences. The model period is one year. Following Heathcote (2005) and

Castaneda, DÌaz-Gimenez, and RÌos-Rull (2003), we model the life cycle as a stochastic

transition between various labor productivity states that also allows householdís expected

income to rise over time. The stochastic-aging economy is designed to capture the idea that

liquidity constraints may be most important for younger individuals who are at the bottom

of an upward-sloping lifetime labor income proÖle without requiring that household age be

incorporated into our already large state space.

In our stochastic life cycle model, households transit from state w via two mechanisms:

(i) aging and (ii) productivity shocks, where the events of aging and receiving productivity

shocks are assumed to be mutually exclusive. The probability of transiting from a state wj

via aging is equal to j = 1=(pjL), where pjis the fraction of population with productivity

wjin the ergodic distribution over the discrete support W; and L is a constant equal to

the expected lifetime. Similarly, the conditional probability of transiting from a working-age

state wj to a working-age state wi due to a productivity shock is deÖned as P(wijwj ): The

overall probability of moving from state j to state i, denoted by ji, is therefore equal to the

probability of transition from j to i via aging, plus the probability of transition from j to i

via a productivity shock, conditional on not aging, so that

 =

2

6

6

6

6

6

6

4

0 1 0 0

0 0 .

.

. 0

0 0 0 J1

J 0 0 0

3

7

7

7

7

7

7

5

+

2

6

6

6

6

6

6

4

(1  1) 0 0 0

0

.

.

. 0 0

0 0 (1  J1) 0

0 0 0 (1  J )

3

7

7

7

7

7

7

5

P: (1)

The fractions pj are the solutions to the system of equations p = p: A detailed description

7
of this process is available in the Appendix of Heathcoteís paper.

Young households are born as renters. In this model, we do not allow for inter-generational

transfers of wealth (Önancial or non-Önancial) or human capital. Instead, we assume that,

upon death, estates are taxed at a 100 percent rate by the government and immediately

resold.

2.2 Preferences

In the spirit of RÌos-Rull and S·nchez-Marcos (2008), Kiyotaki, Michaelides, and Nikolov

(2008) and Chatterjee and Eyigungor (2009), we assume that each household has a perperiod utility function of the form:

U(c; s; h0)

where c stands for nondurable consumption, s represents the consumption of shelter services,

and h

0

is the householdís current period holdings of the housing stock after the within-period

labor income shock has been realized. Shelter services can be obtained either via the rental

market at price  per unit or though homeownership at price q per unit of housing.7 A linear

technology is available that transforms one unit of housing stock, h

0

, into one unit of shelter

services, s.

The householdís choices about the amount of housing services consumed relative to the

housing stock owned, (h

0  s), determine whether a household is renter (h0 = 0), owneroccupier (h

0 = s), or landlord (h0 > s). Landlords lease (h0  s) =: l to renters at rental

rate . Many recent studies assume that renters receive lower utility from a unit of housing

services than homeowners (see, for example, the studies named above). In this model,

we assume that renters receive the same utility from housing services as homeowners, but

landlords face a utility loss caused by the burden of maintaining and managing a rental

7Our speciÖcation of a per-unit price housing follows recent work in quantitative macroeconomics that

studies the housing market in models that must be solved numerically (see, for example, Chatterjee and

Eyigungor (2009)). Ortalo-MagnÈ and Rady (2006) develop a theoretical model in which the house price

varies across di§erent-sized structures. Implementing this approach in our non-convex, discrete dynamic

model which incorporates a large state space and solves for a transitional path between steady states would be

extremely di¢ cult. Solving our model requires iterating between solving an expensive optimization problem

and searching in a two-dimensional space for market clearing prices (q and ). A model with N prices

would require searching along a N-dimensional space, while repeatedly resolving the household optimization

problem. As a result, adding more prices to our model is not currently computationally feasible. However,

we acknowledge that relaxing the assumption of a constant per-unit house price and rent is an interesting

and important avenue for future research.

8
property.

2.3 Assets and market arrangements

There are three assets in the economy: houses (h  0), deposits (d  0) with an interest

rate r, and collateral debt (m  0) with a mortgage rate r

m: Households may alter their

individual holdings of the assets h; d; and m to the new levels h

0

; d0; and m0 at the beginning

of the period after observing their within-period income shock w.

Houses are big items that are available in K discrete sizes, h 2 f0; h(1); :::; h(K)g.

Households may choose not to own a house (h = 0), in which case they obtain shelter

through the rental market. Agents also make a discrete choice about shelter consumption.

Households can rent a small unit of shelter, s, which is smaller that than the minimum

house size available for purchase, s < h(1). Renters are also free to rent a larger amount of

shelter. To maintain symmetry between shelter sizes available to homeowners and renters,

we assume that all levels of shelter consumption must match a point on the housing grid, so

s 2 fs; h(1); :::; h(K)g: The total housing stock, H; is fully owned by households and its size

does not change over time.8 Our set-up with endogenous house prices and ináexible housing

supply thus represents an alternative to a production economy where land ñthe input factor

into the housing production ñis in Öxed supply.

Houses are costly to buy and sell. Households pay a non-convex transactions costs of 

b

percent of the house value when buying a house, and pay 

s percent of the value of the house

when selling a house. Thus, the total transactions costs incurred when buying or selling a

house are 

b

qh0 and 

s

qh: The presence of transactions costs reduces the transaction volume

in the economy, and generates sizeable inaction regions with regard to the household decision

to buy or sell. Therefore, only a part of the total housing stock is traded every period. The

total housing supply and demand are thus determined endogenously, and are respectively

upward and downward sloping functions of the house price. Similarly, the demand and

supply of property in the rental market are endogenously determined, with rental supply

8Although the stock of housing (as well as population size) is Öxed in our model, there is evidence that

the stock of housing increased over the boom period. For example, according to the National Income and

Product Accounts (NIPA) tables, residential investment as a fraction of Öxed investment hovered at about

15 percent between 1949 and 2000, while it rose from 18.2% to 25.2% between 2000 and 2005. However,

section 5.4 of the paper demonstrates that the generated increase in the price-rent ratio in our model is

robust to allowing for increases in the stock of housing.

9
determined by the individual demands for housing and shelter, h

0  s.

Homeowners incur maintenance expenses, which o§set physical depreciation of housing

properties. The actual expense depends both upon the value of housing and the quantity

of owned property that is rented to other households, h

0  s. We assume that housing

occupied by a renter depreciates more rapidly than owner occupied housing. This problem

arises because renters decide how intensely to utilize a house but may not actually pay

the resulting cost, which creates an incentive to overutilize the property. Housing which is

consumed by the owner depreciates at rate o while the depreciation rate for rented property

is r; with r > o. Thus, current total maintenance costs facing an agent who has just

chosen housing capital equal to h

0 are given by

M(h

0

; s) = (0s + r maxfh

0  s; 0g): (2)

Homeownership confers access to collateralized borrowing at a constant markup over the

risk-free deposit rate, r, so that r

m = r + : Borrowers must, however, satisfy a minimum

equity requirement. In a steady state where the house price does not change across time,

the minimum equity requirement is given by the constraint

m0  (1  )qh0; (3)

with  > 0: The equity requirement limits entry to the housing market, since households

interested in buying a house with a market value qh0 must put down at least a fraction  of

the value of the house. By the same token, households who wish to sell their house and move

to a di§erent size house or become renters must repay all the outstanding debt, since the

option of mortgage default is not available. The accumulated housing equity above the down

payment can, however, be used as collateral for home equity loans.9 Along the transitional

path where house prices áuctuate, the operational constraint becomes

m0I

f(m0>m)[(h

06=h)g  (1  ) qh0

: (4)

9Similarly to DÌaz and Luengo-Prado (2008), we abstract from income requirements when purchasing

houses. See their paper for further discussion. Chambers, Garriga and Schlagenhauf (2006) and Campbell

and Cocco (2003) o§er a more complete analysis of mortgage choice. See Li and Yao (2005) for an alternative

model with reÖnancing costs.

10
This modiÖed version of the constraint shown in equation number 3 implies that homeowners

need not decrease their collateral debt balance during house price declines, as long as they

do not sell their house. On the other hand, when house prices rise, households can access the

additional housing equity through costless reÖnancing or a home equity loan. In a steadystate environment where prices are constant, equation 4 reduces to equation 3.

2.4 The Government

We follow DÌaz and Luengo-Prado (2008) in modeling a tax system with a preferential

tax treatment of owner-occupied housing that mimics the U.S. system in a stylized way.

In addition to the taxation of household labor and asset income, the government imposes

a proportional property tax on housing which is fully deductible from income taxes, and

allows deductions for interest payments on collateral debt (mortgages and home equity). As

in the U.S. tax code, the imputed rental value of owner-occupied housing is excluded from

taxable income. As discussed below, we expand on the tax treatment of rental property in

existing models of the housing market by allowing landlords to deduct depreciation of the

rental property from their taxable income. For simplicity, we assume proportional income

taxation at the rate 

y

. We do not require a balanced budget every period.

The total taxable income is thus deÖned as

ye = w + rd + I

h

06=0 



mrmm  h

qh0



+ I

h

0>s[ (h

0  s)  LLq (h0  s)  rq (h0  s)]; (5)

where w + rd represents household labor income plus earned interest. The Örst term in

brackets represents the tax deduction received by homeowners, where 

mrmm is the mortgage

interest deduction, and 

h

qh0is the fully deductible property tax payment made by the

household. The next term in brackets represents the taxable rental income of landlords, which

equals total rents received,  (h

0  s), minus the tax deductions available to landlords. The

term 

LLq (h0  s) represents the tax deduction for depreciation of the rental property, where



LL represents the fraction of the total value of the rental property that is tax deductible

in each year. The Önal term that determines taxable rental income, rq (h

0  s), represents

tax deductible maintenance expenses. If the tax deductions for the rental property exceed

rental income, so  (h

0  s) <  LLq (h0  s) + rq (h0  s), then rental losses will reduce the

householdsítax liability by o§setting income from wages and interest, w + rd.

11
At this point it is useful to discuss the current U.S. tax treatment of landlords and explain

how the key features of the tax code are incorporated into our model. Landlords must

pay income taxes on rental income, but are permitted to deduct many di§erent expenses

associated with operating a rental property from their gross rental income. Among the

major tax deductible rental expenditures incorporated into our model are mortgage interest

payments, property taxes paid on the rental property, depreciation of the rental structure,

and maintenance expenditures.10 The amount of the depreciation deduction is speciÖed in the

U.S. tax code, and we discuss the exact depreciation rate used in our model in Section 4. In

addition, landlords who meet a minimum standard of involvement with their rental property

may use rental losses to o§set income earned from sources other than real estate.11

2.5 The Dynamic Programming Problem

A household starts any given period t with a stock of residential capital, h  0, deposits,

d  0, and collateral debt (mortgage and equity loans), m  0. Households observe the

idiosyncratic earnings shocks, w, and ñgiven the current prices (q; ) ñ solve the following

problem:

v(w; d; m; h) = max

c;s;h0;d0;m0

U(c; s; h0) + 

X

w02W

(w

0

jw)v(w

0

; d0; m0; h0) (6)

subject to

c +  (s  h

0

) + d

0  m0 + q(h0  h) + Is



s

qh + I

b



b

qh0(7)

 w + (1 + r)d  (1 + r

m) m  y

ye 

h

qh0  qM (h

0

; s)

m0I

f(m0>m)[(h

06=h)g  (1  ) qh0

(8)

m0  0 (9)

10Other expenses that are tax deductable but not incorporated in out model are expenses related to

advertising, travel to the rental property, comissions, insurance, legal and professional fees, management

fees, supplies, and utilities. See IRS publication 527 for details on the tax treatment of residential rental

property.

11A maximum of $25; 000 in rental property losses can be used to o§set income from other sources, and

this deduction is phased out between $100; 000 and $150; 000 of income. In our stylized model we abstract

away from these features of the tax system.

12
d

0  0 (10)

h

0  s > 0 if h0 > 0 (11)

s > 0 if h0 = 0; (12)

by choosing non-durable consumption, c, shelter services consumption, s, as well as current

levels of housing, h

0

, deposits, d

0

; and collateral debt, m0: The term  (s  h

0

) represents either

a rental payment by renters (i.e., households with h

0 = 0), or the rental income received by

landlords (i.e., households with h

0 > s). The term q(h0  h) captures the di§erence between

the value of the housing purchased at the start of the time period (h

0

) and the stock of

housing that the household entered the period with (h). Transactions costs enter into the

budget constraint when housing is sold (

s

qh) or bought (

b

qh0), with the binary indicators

I

s and Ib

indicating the events of selling and buying, respectively. Household labor income is

represented by w, and it follows the process w(wtjwt1) described in Section 2.1. Households

earn interest income rd on their holdings of deposits in the previous period, and pay mortgage

interest r

mm on their outstanding collateral debt in the last period. The income and property

tax payments are represented by 

y

ye and 

h

qh0, with 

y denoting the marginal income tax

rate, ye representing the total taxable income from Equation 5, and 

h being the property

tax rate. qM (h

0

; s) represents the maintenance expenses for homeowners which is described

in Equation 2. Finally, Equation 8 indicates that a household that either increases the size

of its mortgage (m0 > m) or moves to a di§erent-sized home (h

0 6= h) must satisfy the down

payment requirement m0  (1  )qh0.

3 DeÖnition of a Stationary Equilibrium

In the benchmark economy, we restrict ourselves to stationary equilibria. The individual

state variables are deposit holdings, d, mortgage balances, m, housing stock holdings, h, and

the household wage, w; with x = (w; d; m; h) denoting the individual state vector. Let d 2

D = R+, m 2 M = R+, h 2 H = fh1; :::; h11g, and w 2 W = fw1; :::; w7g, and let S =

DMHW denote the individual state space. Next, let  be a probability measure on

(S, Bs), where Bs is the Borel algebra. For every Borel set B 2 Bs, let (B) indicate the

13
mass of agents whose individual state vectors lie in B. Finally, deÖne a transition function

P : SBs! [0; 1] so that P(x; B) deÖnes the probability that a household with state x will

have an individual state vector lying in B next period.

DeÖnition (Stationary Equilibrium): A stationary equilibrium is a collection of

value functions v(x), a household policy fc(x); s(x); d0(x); m0(x); h0(x)g, probability measure,

; and price vector (q; ) such that:

1. c(x); s(x); d0(x); m0(x); and h

0

(x) are optimal decision rules to the householdsídecision

problem from Section 2.5, given prices q and :

2. Markets clear:

(a) Housing market clearing: R

S

h

0

(x)d = H, where H is Öxed

(b) Rental market clearing: R

S

(h

0

(x)  s(x))d = 0;

where S=D M H W.

3.  is a stationary probability measure: (B) = R

S

P(x; B)d for any Borel set B 2Bs.

4 Calibration

The model is calibrated in two stages. In the Örst stage, values are assigned to parameters

that can be determined from the data without the need to solve the model. In the second

stage, the remaining parameters are estimated by the simulated method of moments (SMM).

Table 1 summarizes the parameters determined in the Örst stage. These parameters were

drawn from other studies or were calculated directly from the data. Table 2 contains the four

remaining parameters that we estimate in the second stage based on moments constructed

using the data from the American Housing Survey (AHS) and the Census Tables. These

moments are listed in Table 3.

4.1 Demography and Labor Income

To calibrate the stochastic aging economy, we assume that households live, on average, 50

periods (e.g., L = 50). In terms of the process for household productivity, many papers in

the quantitative macroeconomics literature adopt simple AR(1) speciÖcation to capture the

14
Table 1: Exogenous Parameters

Parameter Value

Autocorrelation w 0.90

Standard Deviation w 0.20

Risk Aversion  2.00

Down Payment Requirement  0.20

Selling Cost 

s 0.07

Buying Cost 

b 0.025

Risk-free Interest Rate r 0.04

Spread  0.015

Depreciation Rate for Homeowner-Occupiers 0 0.025

Property Tax Rate 

h 0.01

Mortgage Deductibility Rate 

m 1.00

Deductibility Rate for Depreciation of Rental Property 

LL 0.023

Income Tax 

y 0.20

earnings dynamics for working-age households that is characterized by the serial correlation

coe¢ cient, w, and the standard deviation of the innovation term, w.

12 Using data from

the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), work by Card (1994), Hubbard, Skinner, and

Zeldes (1995) and Heathcote, Storesletten, and Violante (2010) indicates a w in the range

0.88 to 0.96, and a w in the range 0.12 to 0.25. For the purposes of this paper, we set w and

w to 0.90 and 0.20, respectively, and follow Tauchen (1986) to approximate an otherwise

continuous process with a discrete number (7) of states.

4.2 Preferences

Following the literature on housing choice (see, for example, DÌaz and Luengo-Prado (2008),

Chatterjee and Eyigungor (2009), and Kiyotaki, Michaelides, and Nikolov (2008)), the

preferences over the consumption of non-durable goods (c) and housing services (s) are

modeled as non-separable of the form

U (c; s; h0) = (1  Ih

0>s)

(c



s

1

)

1  

1

: (13)

12 Heathcote (2005) discusses alternatives to the AR(1) speciÖcation in a technical appendix which is

available on the Review of Economic Studies web site.

15
The binary variable I

h

0>s indicates that a homeowner is also a landlord. The risk aversion

parameter, ; is set to 2: The remaining parameters that characterize preferences are the

weight on non-durable consumption of the Cobb-Douglas aggregator, , the discount factor,

, and the landlord utility loss parameter, . These three parameters are estimated in the

second stage. Section 4.5 discusses our strategy for identifying these parameters and explains

the role of the landlord utility loss in the model.

4.3 Market Arrangements

Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE), Gruber and Martin (2003) document that selling costs for housing are on average 7 percent, while buying costs are around

2.5 percent. We use the authorsíestimates and set 

b = 0:025 and s = 0:07: In terms of

the maintenance cost function M(h

0

; s) in Equation (2), Harding, Rosenthal, and Sirmans

(2007) estimate that the depreciation rate for housing units used as shelter is between 2.5

and 3 percent. We thus set 0 = 0:025. The depreciation rate of rental property, r, is

estimated in the second stage (see Section 4.5).

To calibrate the interest rates on deposits r, we use the interest rate on the 30-year

constant maturity Treasury deáated by year-to-year headline CPI ináation. Using the data

from the Federal Reserve Statistical Release, the deáated Treasury rate averaged 3.8 percent

for the period between 1977 and 2008.13 We thus set the real interest rate to 4 percent so that

r = 0:04: To calibrate the mortgage rate r

m = r + , we set the markup  to represent the

spread between the nominal interest rate on a 30-year Öxed-rate conventional home mortgage

and the interest rate on nominal 30-year constant maturity Treasury. The average spread

between 1977 and 2008 is 1.5 percent, so  is set to 0:015. In the baseline model, a minimum

down payment of 20 percent is required to purchase a home.14

4.4 Taxes

Using data from the 2007 American Community Survey, DÌaz and Luengo-Prado (2010)

compute the median property tax rate for the median house value and report a housing

property tax rate of 0:95 percent. Based on information from TAXSIM, they document

13See Federal Reserve Statistical Release, H15, Selected Interest Rates.

14Using the American Housing Survey 1993, Chambers, Garriga and Schlagenhauf document that the

average down payment is approximately 20 percent.

16
that on average, 90 percent of mortgage interest payments are tax deductible. We thus set



h = 0:01; and allow mortgages to be fully deductible so that m = 1. The U.S. tax code

assumes that a rental structure depreciates over a 27:5 year horizon, which implies an annual

depreciation rate of 3:63 percent. However, only structures are depreciable for tax purposes,

and the value of a house in our model includes both the value of the structure and the

land that the house is situated on. Davis and Heathcote (2007) Önd that on average, land

accounts for 36 percent of the value of a house in the U.S. between 1975 and 2006. Based

on their Öndings, we set the depreciation rate of rental property for tax purposes to 

LL =

(1  :36) :0363 = :023. Lastly, we follow DÌaz and Luengo-Prado (2008) and Prescott

(2004) and set the income tax rate, 

y

; to 0:20.

4.5 Estimation

Based on the previous discussion, four structural parameters must be estimated: the CobbDouglas consumption share, , the discount factor, , the landlord utility loss, , and

the depreciation rate of rental property, r. Let  = f; ; ; rg represent the vector of

parameters to be estimated. Let mk represent the kth moment in the data, and let mk()

represent the corresponding simulated moment generated by the model. The SMM estimate

of the parameter vector is chosen to minimize the squared di§erence between the simulated

and empirical moments,

 = arg min b



X

4

k=1

(mk  mk())2: (14)

Minimizing this function is computationally expensive because it requires numerically solving

the agentsíoptimization problem and Önding the equilibrium house price and rent for each

trial value of the parameter vector.

The four moments targeted during estimation are the homeownership rate, the landlord

rate, the imputed rent-to-wage ratio, and the fraction of homeowners who hold collateral

debt. The remainder of this section details the data sources for the targeted moments and

discusses how the parameters () impact the simulated moments. The share parameter 

a§ects the allocation of income between non-durable consumption and shelter by agents in

the model. This motivates our use of the imputed rent-to-wage ratio as a targeted moment.

Using data from 1980, 1990, and 2000 Decennial Census of Housing, Davis and Ortalo-MagnÈ

17
(2010) estimate the share of expenditures on housing services by renters to be roughly 0.25,

and Önd that the share has been constant across time and MSA regions. The discount

factor, ; directly impacts the willingness of agents to borrow, so we attempt to match

the fraction of owner-occupiers with collateral debt. According to data from the 1994-1998

American Housing Survey (AHS), approximately 65 percent of homeowners report collateral

debt balances.15

The Önal two targeted moments are the homeownership rate and landlord rate. The

homeownership rate averaged 0:66 in the United States between 1995 and 2005. Chambers, Garriga, and Schlagenhauf (2009a) use the American Housing Survey data to compute

the fraction of homeowners who claim to receive rental income. The authors Önd that approximately 10 percent of the sampled homeowners receive rental income. Targeting the

homeownership and landlord moments implies that we are also implicitly targeting the fraction of households who are renters (0:34) and owner-occupiers (0:56) because the landlord,

renter, and owner-occupier categories are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.

The homeownership and landlord moments provide information about the magnitude of the

landlord utility loss parameter () and the depreciation rate of rental property (r). Within

the model, the parameters  and r both impact the decision to become a landlord, but they

have di§erent implications for household behavior. When the landlord utility loss parameter

 is greater than zero, a household will only become a landlord if rental income increases

utility by enough to o§set the fact that  reduces the utility received by a landlord from all

consumption of housing and shelter. Owners of large houses are able to rent out more space,

and consequently are able to obtain more rental income than owners of small houses, so they

are more likely to Önd it optimal to pay the landlord utility cost  in order to obtain rental

income. In this sense,  operates much as a Öxed cost of being a landlord would operate in

the model. In contrast, an increase in r; holding  Öxed, reduces the proÖtability of renting

out a unit of housing for all households, and is e§ectively an increase in the marginal cost

of being a landlord.

Estimated Parameters (): Table 2 shows the estimated parameters, and Table 3

demonstrates that the model matches the empirical moments used in estimation well. The

15The discount pattern  governs household borrowing behavior in our model. Since deceased agents in

our model are replaced by newborn descendants who do not, however, inherit the asset positions of the dead,

we calibrate  to ensure that households do not borrow excessively and to generate a realistic borrowing

behavior of households in our model economy.

18
estimate of the discount factor, 0:959, appears reasonable. To put the estimate of r in

context, recall that we assume that owner occupied housing depreciates at rate 0 = 0:025,

so our estimate of r indicates that the depreciation rate for rented property is 1:2 percentage

points greater than the depreciation rate of owner occupied property. The estimate of the

landlord utility loss parameter, , indicates that landlords incur only a 2:4 percent utility

loss due to the burden of managing a rental property. The relatively small magnitude of 

indicates that the decision about whether or not to become a landlord is primarily determined

by economic factors which impact the rate of return to investing in rental property, and credit

constraints which limit the ability of households to purchase rental property.

Table 2: Estimated Parameters

Parameter Value

Discount Factor  0.959

Consumption Share  0.720

Depreciation of Rental Property r 0.037

Landlord Utility Loss  0.024

Table 3: Calibration Targets

Moment Data Model

Home-ownership rate 0.66 0.66

Landlord rate 0.10 0.10

Imputed rent-to-wage ratio 0.25 0.25

Fraction of homeowners with collateral debt 0.65 0.64

4.6 Moments not Targeted in the Estimation

As an external test of our model, Table 4 reports several other key statistics generated by

the model that were not targeted in the estimation and compares them to statistics that

are either drawn from other studies, taken from the o¢ cial AHS tables, or computed from

the 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). Appendix C describes how we compute the

SCF statistics. As can be seen in the table, the predictions of the model fall well within the

range of recent estimates based on U.S. data. Overall, the ability of the model to replicate

a number of key moments that were not targeted during the calibration is encouraging.

19
Table 4: Other Moments

Moment Model Data Data Source

Net worth to total income ratio for homeowners 2.94 2.76 SCF 2007

Housing value to total income ratio for homeowners 3.64 3.60 SCF 2007

Loan to total income ratio for homeowners 1.19 1.16 SCF 2007

Loan to value ratio for homeowners 0.31 0.32 SCF 2007

Rental income receipts to income ratio for landlords 0.28 0.31 AHS 2005

House price-rent ratio 11.3 8 - 15.5 Various studies

Notes*: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau report a

price-rent ratio of 10 in the 2001 Residential Finance Survey (chapter 4, Table 4-2). Garner and Verbrugge

(2009), using Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) data drawn from Öve cities over the years 1982-2002,

report that the house price to rent ratio ranges from 8 to 15.5 with a mean of approximately 12. The cities

included in this analysis are Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia.

Table 5: Distribution of Households Across House Sizes

Shelter Services Consumed (s)

Housing Owned (h

0

) Room Small shelter-size Medium shelter-size Large shelter-size % HHs

Renter (h

0 = 0) 67.90 32.10 0.00 0.00 33.75

Small-size property 0.63 99.37 0.00 0.00 13.94

Medium-size property 1.57 6.31 92.17 0.00 48.46

Large-size property 0.00 0.52 99.38 0.10 3.84

% HHs 23.74 27.77 48.48 0.01 100.00

4.7 Cross-sectional Implications of the Model

There are twelve discrete shelter sizes in our model economy: eleven self-standing discretesize housing structures that can be purchased in the housing market, and a very small

living space that can be rented out but is not available for sale. Discreteness in housing

captures the idea that housing units typically come in discrete sizes, such as one bedroom,

two bedroom, or four bedroom. At the same time, the smallest-size shelter unit, which we

call a "room," captures the idea that agents can also rent a very small living space that is

not, however, available for sale. For example, a person can share a room with a roommate,

or can rent a room while sharing the kitchen. The small properties represent starter homes,

while medium-sized properties are owned by agents who represent the average households in

terms of wealth and income. Finally, large properties are in general used for investment, as

they often serve as rental units.

In our model economy, renters are typically hand-to-mouth agents at the bottom of the

20
Table 6: Distribution of Landlords by Labor Income

Labor Income Group % Landlords % Total Rental Property

Group 1 3.32 1.7

Group 2 15.02 10.2

Group 3 33.85 20.7

Group 4 15.44 20.8

Group 5 14.47 20.8

Group 6 12.32 17.7

Group 7 5.58 7.8

Note: Labor income group refers to the seven discrete wage levels that are used to approximate the continuous

wage process.

wealth distribution, and consume little housing. Nearly 68 percent of renters live in a room,

while the rest inhabit the smallest-sized house. In general, homeownership is preferred to

renting, for the standard reasons: the favorable tax-treatment of homeownership, and housing capitalís usefulness as collateral. Households who can a§ord a down payment on a house

typically purchase one, and in the baseline steady-state about half (48.5%) of households own

medium-sized houses. The remainder of homeowners are split between small-sized structures

and large properties. This can be seen in Table 5, which shows the relationship between units

of housing owned and units of shelter consumed in the simulated data. Each row of the table

corresponds to ownership of a particular size property, and the columns of the table trace

out the distribution of shelter consumption for each level of ownership.16

Interestingly, the option to become a landlord exerts an important ináuence on agentsí

decisions in our model economy, and represents and an additional reason why ownership

may be preferred to renting. First, rental income helps low- and medium-income households

Önance housing purchases. Second, the option to become a landlord is an important riskmanagement mechanism for homeowners facing adverse income shocks; exercising this option

allows some to maintain higher consumption than would be otherwise possible, and to avoid

sizable transactions costs associated with downsizing (see Appendix A for details on how

transaction costs a§ect the rental market). Finally, rental units provide investment income.

While only ten percent of agents are landlords in the baseline steady state, the varied

16The Örst row of the table shows the housing consumption for renters. The diagonal elements of the table

below the Örst row correspond to homeowners (h

0 > 0), and reveal the percentage of agents who own each

size house and choose to consume all of the services provided by their house (h

0 = s). We refer to these

non-landlord homeowners as owner occupiers in the remainder of the paper. Cells below the diagonal in

Table 5 refer to landlords, who choose to be a landlord by setting s < h0, and renting out h

0  s units of

shelter on the rental market.

21
motivations to become a landlord lead to a rather diverse landlord pool. Indeed, Table

6 indicates that landlords can be found among all income groups. While the majority of

landlords are either middle or high income households, nearly 20% of landlords are in the

poorest two categories. These predictions are qualitatively consistent with the statistics

reported by Chambers, Garriga and Schlagenhauf (2009c) who, using the 1996 Property

Owners and Managers Survey, Önd that 25 percent of households receiving rental income

are low-income households with annual earnings below $30,000, compared to 30 percent of

high-income households with annual earnings over $100,000 (see their Table 2).

As might be expected, landlords typically own medium-sized or larger properties. Indeed,

nearly 60 percent of the rental supply comes from very large properties; the 4% of the

population who own these properties are essentially all landlords.

Owner-occupiers consume all of the housing services provided by their property. Almost

all owner-occupiers own medium-sized properties or small properties, and owner-occupiers

represent the average household in terms of earnings and Önancial wealth. The remaining

owner-occupiers live in large properties, represent only 0.1 percent of the population, and

are very wealthy households with medium to high wages.

5 What Explains the Changes in the Price-Rent Ratio?

The estimated model is employed to analyze the observed changes in house prices, rents, and

the price-to-rent ratio between 1995 and 2005. The analysis is conducted in two steps. First,

we study the modelís predictions about the responsiveness of house prices and rents, and

the price-rent ratio, to changes in interest rates, borrowing constraints, household incomes,

and the combination of these macroeconomic factors in the steady-state housing market

equilibrium. As such, all of the analysis in Section 5 is based on comparisons of di§erent

steady state economies. In the second step, presented in Section 6, we extend the model to

include deterministic dynamics of house prices and rents. In this analysis, we study the e§ects

of an unanticipated permanent change in the interest rate and required down payment along

a transition path between two steady states. As a cross-check, we also study the modelís

implications for the homeownership rate, loan-to-income, and loan-to-value ratios.

Before examining the role of the interest rate and required down payment in the model,

it is useful to develop some intuition from a simpler analytical framework. In the stan22
dard, frictionless representative rental Örm model, a risk-neutral, Önancially unconstrained

Örm elastically supplies rental housing, so the house price-rent ratio (similarly to the pricedividend ratio in asset pricing theory) is set by an arbitrage condition,

q



=

1

r

;

which equates the rate of return on rental property to the rate of return on deposits.17 In

what follows, our results clearly demonstrate that the relationship between house prices and

rents is more complex in a model which incorporates frictions and allows the supply of rental

property to be determined by the investment decisions of heterogenous, credit constrained

households.

5.1 Relaxation of Down Payment Requirements in a Steady-State

Economy

Figure 2 illustrates the impact of changes in the minimum down payment requirement, ,

on equilibrium housing market outcomes. As  is lowered from 40 percent to 15 percent,

the equilibrium house price rises by 2.5 percent while the rent decreases by 1 percent, so

the price-rent ratio increases by 3.4 percent. A reduction in  more in line with the recent

U.S. experience, from 0.20 to 0.15, leads to a 1.8 percent increase in the house price, and a

trivial (0.04 percent) decrease in rent.18 The price-rent ratio is relatively unresponsive to ,

so a lessening of credit constraints cannot by itself explain the large run-up in the price-rent

observed in recent years.

That said, the homeownership rate responds strongly to changes in down payment requirements. When  is lowered from 0.40 to 0.20, the homeownership rate rises from 60 to

66 percent; when  falls further to 0.15, the homeownership rate increases to 81 percent.

The loan-to-wage ratio and the fraction of homeowners in debt also rise as  falls.

17 If included in the model, depreciation rates, tax terms, and house price appreciation may also enter

in the arbitrage condition. The down payment requirement does not enter the arbitrage condition of the

representative rental Örm, since the Örm is not credit constrained.

18Chambers, Garriga and Schlagenhauf (2008) document decreases in the average down payment requirement for conventional mortgages since 1995, while Chomsisengphet and Pennington-Cross (2006) document

similar trends in the subprime lending markets. In general, the fraction of households with a loan to value

ratio greater than 90 percent rose from 10 percent in 1990 to 25 percent by 1995 before retracting slightly

to 18 percent in 2005, according to the Federal Finance Board.

23
0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4

2

2.2

2.4

2.6

2.8

3

Equity Requirement θ

House Price

0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

Equity Requirement θ

Rent

0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4

8

10

12

14

16

18

Equity Requirement θ

Price−Rent Ratio

0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

Equity Requirement θ

Homeownership Rate (%)

0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Equity Requirement θ

Avg. Loan−to−Value Ratio

0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4

0

1

2

3

4

5

Equity Requirement θ

Avg. Loan−to−Wage Ratio

Figure 2: The Housing Market Equilibrium Under Di§erent Equity Requirements

The key to understanding the large e§ect of  on homeownership, but the small e§ect

of  on house prices, is the fact that housing market responses are primarily driven by

households for whom the minimum down payment is a binding constraint: low-income, lowsavings households. These households are numerous, but since these entrants are marginal

in terms of income and wealth, their impact on house prices is modest. To demonstrate this,

Table 7 shows changes in the steady state distribution of households across house sizes when

 falls. While the fraction of households who own small-size houses jumps up because of the

ináux of new homeowners into the housing market, the fraction of households owning the

medium- and large-size properties actually declines, and so does the rental supply. Thus,

the equilibrium response of landlords is e§ectively to sell housing to their tenants, and they

are willing to do this because the house price has risen while the rent has remained virtually

constant.19

19This statement is not literally true, since the decrease in the downpayment discussed in this section is

based on a comparison of two di§erent steady state economies.

24
Table 7: The Distribution of Owned Housing Under Di§erent Downpayment Requirements

House Size 20% Downpayment 15% Downpayment

% Households % Housing Stock % Households % Housing Stock

Renter 33.8 0.0 18.9 0.0

Small-size property 13.9 11.3 32.6 26.0

Medium-size property 48.5 70.8 47.0 67.0

Large-size property 3.84 17.7 1.51 7.1

Table 8: The Partial and Equilibrium E§ects of a Reduction in the Equity Requirement to

15%

Baseline 15% Equity Requirement

Fixed Prices Equilibrium Prices

(1) (2) (3)

House Price 2.55 2.55 2.60

Rent 0.22 0.22 0.22

Share of Homeowners 0.66 0.81 0.81

Share of Renters 0.34 0.19 0.19

Share of Landlords 0.10 0.11 0.08

Share of Owner-Occupiers 0.56 0.70 0.73

Share of Homeowners in Debt 0.64 0.69 0.67

25
Table 8 highlights the role of general equilibrium forces in generating housing market

outcomes. Column (2) displays a partial equilibrium experiment, which counterfactually

holds both house prices and rents Öxed at the baseline market-clearing level while reducing 

from 20 to 15 percent. In contrast, Column (3) reports the general equilibrium impact of this

decrease in ; here both house prices and rents adjust to clear the housing and rental markets.

As noted above, rent is nearly unresponsive to  in general equilibrium; the initial rent level

of 0.22 holds in both the partial and general equilibrium experiments. The share of renters

(equivalently, the share of homeowners) is also essentially the same across experiments: a

reduction in  causes the share of renters to fall from 34 to 19 percent in either case. However,

the share of landlords in the economy varies signiÖcantly across experiments. In the partial

equilibrium experiment, the share of landlords in the economy rises from 10 to 11 percent

because when the house price and rent are held constant, a decrease in  allows a small

fraction of households to purchase larger properties and become landlords. However, when

prices are allowed to adjust, the share of landlords actually falls from 10 to 8 percent. This

happens because the increase in the equilibrium house price and falling rent reduce the rate

of return to being a landlord. As noted above, despite the large increase in homeownership,

only a 2 percent increase in the house price is needed to clear the market and accommodate

these new homeowners.

Our results are consistent with several recent studies which document the positive correlation between the size of the down payment requirement and homeownership (e.g., Chambers,

Garriga, and Schlagenhauf (2009a), DÌaz and Luengo-Prado (2008), and Ortalo-MagnÈ and

Rady (2006)). These studies suggest that, while Önancial sector innovations have minimal

impact for existing homeowners, lower down payment requirements strongly a§ect households for whom the high down payment is a binding constraint. The authors suggest that

when down payment requirements are relaxed, the initially excluded households enter the

housing market and the homeownership rate rises. This mechanism is supported by the

empirical Öndings in Ortalo-MagnÈ and Rady (1999), Muellbauer and Murphy (1990), and

Muellbauer and Murphy (1997) who document that decreases in the down payment requirements in England and Wales after the Önancial liberalization of the early 1980s were one of

the two most important factors associated with unprecedented increases in young-household

homeownership (the second factor being optimistic appreciation expectations).

In summary, the model clearly indicates that in the absence of changes in other factors, a

26
1985 1990 1995 2000 2005

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Year

Mortgage Rate (% real)

Contract Rate

Effective Rate

Figure 3: The Evolution of Real Mortgage Rates in the United States

relaxation of borrowing constraints cannot by itself account for the magnitude of the recent

increase in the price-rent ratio. With this result in mind, the next sections of the paper

examine the impact of changes in the interest rate and income on the equilibrium price-rent

ratio.

5.2 Changes in the Interest Rate in a Steady-State Economy

Figure 3 shows the evolution of the real contract and e§ective mortgage rates on conventional

single-family mortgages in the United States between 1985 and 2005.20 The real mortgage

rate for residential property oscillated around the 5 percent mark between 1990 and 1997,

but started to fall following the late 1990s, before reaching 2.5 percent in 2005.

Figure 4 illustrates the impact of changes in the real risk-free rate, r, on equilibrium

housing market outcomes. Since the mortgage interest rate r

m is determined by a constant

markup, , over r, changes in r directly translate into changes in r

m; hence changes in r

a§ect both the cost of borrowing and the rate of return on saving.21 As can be seen in the

20The e§ective rate represents the sum of the contract rate and the discounted initial fees and charges. The

estimates are provided by the Federal Housing Financing Board. The nominal rate is deáated by year-to-year

CPI ináation.

21The mortgage spread, deÖned as the di§erence between the real mortgage rate on a 30-year conventioal

27
0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

Interest Rate

House Price

0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

Interest Rate

Rent

0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06

8

10

12

14

16

18

Interest Rate

Price−Rent Ratio

0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Interest Rate

Homeownership Rate (%)

0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Interest Rate

Avg. Loan−to−Value Ratio

0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06

0

1

2

3

4

5

Interest Rate

Avg. Loan−to−Wage Ratio

Figure 4: The Housing Market Equilibrium Under Di§erent Interest Rates

Ögure, interest rate changes have a large e§ect on house prices and rents. When r is lowered

from 6 percent to 1 percent, the equilibrium house price increases by 33 percent, while the

equilibrium rent decreases by 14 percent, leading to a 54 percent increase in the price-rent

ratio (from 9.9 to 15.2). When r is lowered from 4 percent to 2 percent, a decrease broadly

consistent with the actual decline between 1995 and 2005, the house price level rises by 16.4

percent, the rent falls by 2.6 percent, and the price-rent ratio rises by 20 percent from its

initial level of 11.3.

Lower interest rates reduce the cost of household borrowing and reduce the rate of return

on household savings. Both e§ects increase demand for owned housing. On the intensive

margin, demand for housing services rises, both due to the lower opportunity cost and to

the lower costs of Önancing a given mortgage; thus, house prices rise, which prices out some

Öxed-rate mortgage and the interest rate on a 30-year constant maturity Treasury, áuctuated in a relatively

narrow range between 1 and 2 percent since 1995, although the mark-up fell temporarily below one percent

between 1991 and 1993.

28
Table 9: The Distribution of Owned Housing and Landlords Under Di§erent Interest Rates

6% Interest Rate 4% Interest Rate 2% Interest Rate

House Size % HHs % Landlords % HHs % Landlords % HHs % Landlords

Renter 18.9 0.0 33.7 0.0 34.2 0.0

Small property 46.2 25.6 13.9 0.9 12.3 0.9

Medium property 31.4 28.1 48.5 62.3 48.0 45.9

Large property 3.4 46.4 3.8 36.8 5.6 53.2

of the less wealthy. At the same time, there is a portfolio shift: rental property investment

becomes relatively more attractive as borrowing costs fall and as the return to the alternative

investment, deposits, falls. Despite the rise in house prices, which ceteris paribus raises the

cost of becoming a landlord, the net e§ect is that the supply of rental properties rises and

rents fall. For example, when the interest rate decreases from 4 to 2 percent, the aggregate

supply of rental property increases by 4 percent while the rent falls from 0.22 to 0.21.

Changes in r also shift the ownership structure of the rental market, as indicated in

Table 9. At a 6 percent interest rate, owners of small properties account for 26 percent of

all landlords, because many of these households use rental income to Önance high mortgage

interest payments. When the interest rate is lowered from 6 percent to 4 percent, higher

house prices and the increase in the time required to save up a down-payment reduce the total

number of homeowners in the economy, though there is an increase the number of owners

of medium-sized properties, who now comprise the majority of landlords. The most notable

change resulting from a further lowering of the interest rate to 2 percent is the shift in the

landlord property types: while the total number of landlords is approximately unchanged,

at this lower interest rate the percentage of landlords owning large properties rises from 36

percent to over 50 percent.

Perhaps surprisingly, the 50 percent reduction in the interest rate from 4 percent to 2

percent has almost no impact on the homeownership rate (Figure 4). This is caused by

general equilibrium price e§ects, which are illustrated in Table 10. As in Table 8, column

(2) displays the partial equilibrium counterfactual, while column (3) displays the general

equilibrium outcome. If house prices and rents did not adjust, the homeownership rate

would rise from 66 percent to 81 percent, reáecting the lower cost of consuming owned

housing services and the reduced attractiveness of saving relative to housing investment. At

29
Table 10: The Partial and Equilibrium E§ects of the Interest Rate Reduction to 2%

Baseline (r = 0:04) Reduction of Interest Rate to 2%

Fixed Prices Equilibrium Prices

(1) (2) (3)

House Price 2.55 2.55 2.97

Rent 0.22 0.22 0.21

Share of Homeowners 0.66 0.81 0.66

Share of Renters 0.34 0.19 0.34

Share of Landlords 0.10 0.49 0.10

Share of Owner-Occupiers 0.56 0.32 0.55

Share of Homeowners in Debt 0.64 0.94 0.84

the same time, the fraction of landlords in the economy would rise from 10 percent to nearly

50 percent, because when q and  are held constant, a decrease in r increases the rate of

return to being a landlord and decreases the rate of return to the alternative of holding

deposits. In equilibrium, however, higher house prices increase the minimum down payment,

and the lower interest rate makes it di¢ cult for prospective homeowners to save up for it.

Furthermore, equilibrium rent decreases from 0.22 to 0.21, despite the fact that house prices

are rising, making renting relatively more attractive, and reducing the return obtained by

landlords.

5.3 Changes in Income in a Steady-State Economy

A large body of empirical literature identiÖes the level and growth rate of income as an

important determinant of house price dynamics (see, for example, Poterba (1991), Englund

and Ioannides (1997), Muellbauer and Murphy (1997), Malpezzi (1999), and Sutton (2002)).

In the United States, real hourly wages increased by 9.4 percent between 1995 and 2005.22

Figure 5 summarizes the impact of changes in income on the housing market equilibrium.

In our experiment, we assume that household wages rise at the same rate across all wage

groups. The model suggests that both house prices and rents increase at about the same

rate as wages.23 For example, when the wage level increases by 10 percent relative to the

22This calculation is based on the BLS Current Employment Statistics (CES) real wage data, series ID

CES0500000032.

23The actual changes in the income levels were not, however, symmetric. Heathcote, Perri, and Violante

(2010) document the changes in the U.S. earnings inequality between 1967 and 2006. Using the CPS data,

the authors Önd that the real earnings of the bottom decile of the earnings distribution did not, on average,

grow between 1985 and 2000, although the earnings of the top earnings distribution grew steadily over the

30
−20 −15 −10 −5 0 5 10 15 20

0

1

2

3

4

Income Deviation from the Mean (%)

House Price

−20 −15 −10 −5 0 5 10 15 20

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

Income Deviation from the Mean (%)

Rent

−20 −15 −10 −5 0 5 10 15 20

8

10

12

14

16

18

Income Deviation from the Mean (%)

Price−Rent Ratio

−20 −15 −10 −5 0 5 10 15 20

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Income Deviation from the Mean (%)

Homeownership Rate (%)

−20 −15 −10 −5 0 5 10 15 20

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Income Deviation from the Mean (%)

Avg. Loan−to−Value Ratio

−20 −15 −10 −5 0 5 10 15 20

0

1

2

3

4

5

Income Deviation from the Mean (%)

Avg. Loan−to−Wage Ratio

Figure 5: The Housing Market Equilibrium Under Di§erent Income Levels

benchmark economy, both the equilibrium house price and the rent rise by approximately 11

percent, so the house price-rent ratio stays approximately constant. Since the relative rice of

obtaining housing services via homeownership versus renting remains unchanged, symmetric

changes in income of the sort examined here have no e§ect on the homeownership and

landlord rates.

Once again, equilibrium price e§ects play a central role, as illustrated in Table 11. As in

Tables 8 and 10, column (2) displays the partial equilibrium counterfactual, while column

(3) displays the general equilibrium outcome. Where house prices and rents not allowed

to adjust, rising income would have a substantial impact on the housing market, with the

homeownership rate increasing from 66 to 92 percent, reáecting the fact that more households

are able to a§ord the down payment and mortgage payments required to purchase a house.

sample period (see their Figure 7). The authors also Önd that the wage dynamics of the bottom decile of the

earnings distribution are very similar to those for the median workers. Given our stylized income process,

we leave the exploration of asymmetric income changes to further work.

31
Table 11: The Partial and Equilibrium E§ects of a 10% Increase in Income

Baseline 10% Increase in Income

Fixed Prices Equilibrium Prices

(1) (2) (3)

House Price 2.55 2.55 2.85

Rent 0.22 0.22 0.25

Share of Homeowners 0.66 0.92 0.67

Share of Renters 0.34 0.21 0.33

Share of Landlords 0.10 0.08 0.11

Share of Owner-Occupiers 0.56 0.71 0.56

Share of Homeowners in Debt 0.64 0.70 0.64

In addition, many households would stop renting out their units as they could more easily

cover their mortgage payments: the share of owner-occupied housing would increase from

0.56 to 0.71. In equilibrium, rising incomes lead to an increase in house prices, but drive

up the cost of renting as well. Since the relative cost of renting versus owning remains

unchanged, the proportions of renters, homeowners and landlords remain unchanged as well.

5.4 Combined Changes in Market Fundamentals

As discussed in the preceding sections, neither declines in the real interest rate, relaxation

of borrowing constraints, nor rising incomes can on their own account for the increases

in the price-rent ratio, homeownership rate, and household debt between 1995 and 2005.

This section examines the combined e§ects of changes in these fundamentals on equilibrium

housing market outcomes. Figure 6 depicts the percentage deviation of the steady state

price-rent ratio from the baseline economy for a range of interest rates and required down

payments. Point A represents the calibrated baseline economy with an interest rate on

deposits, r, of 4 percent and a required down payment, , of 20 percent. As illustrated in

the Ögure, the price-rent ratio rises with a falling interest rate and lower down payment

requirement. In fact, the price-rent ratio increases by 20 percent over its baseline value for a

reasonable representation of the recent U.S. experience; i.e., a reduction in the interest rate

from 4 to 2 percent and in down payment from 20 to 15 percent. This represents a sizable

portion of the actual increase: the U.S. price-rent ratio increased by 36 percent from 1995

32
0.02

0.03

0.04

0.1

0.12

0.14

0.16

0.18

0.2

0

5

10

15

20

25

Equity Requirement (θ)

Interest Rate (r)

% Deviations from the Baseline Price−Rent Ratio

Point A

Figure 6: Percentage Deviations of the House Price-Rent Ratio from the Baseline (Point A)

Under Di§erent Interest Rates and Required Downpayment

to 2005, and by 26 percent between 2000 and 2005.24

Table 12 provides a more comprehensive analysis of the simulated e§ects by showing the

percentage deviations in house prices, rents, and the price-rent ratio from their baseline values (column (1)). To facilitate a comparison of the modelís predictions to the data, columns

(4) and (5) show recent changes in the U.S. Column (2) shows that when income is held

constant, lowering  and r raises house prices, lowers rents, and consequently increases the

price-rent ratio. In addition, the homeownership rate rises from 66 percent to 67 percent,

an increase that closely matches the one observed in the U.S. during the housing boom (Figure 1). Column (3) of Table 12 shows that increasing wages by 10 percent while decreasing

 and r does not change the price-rent ratio compared to the scenarios where income is held

constant.25 However, the model also predicts that higher income will cause a small increase

24The U.S. price-rent ratio is constructed using the FHFA house price index and the BLS Rent of Primary

Residence Index.

25A 10 percent increase in real wages is approximately what was observed in the U.S. between 1995 and

33
Table 12: The Combined E§ects of Interest Rate, Required Downpayment, and Income

Changes

Baseline Changes in r and  (% from Baseline ) U.S. Data (%)

r=0.04 r=0.02 r=0.02 1995-2005 2000-2005

=0.2  = 0:15  = 0:15

w = 0% w = 10%

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

house price 2.55 16.1% 28.1% 46.3% 31.1%

rental price 0.22 -3.5% 7.1% 7.5% 4.2%

price-rent ratio 11.3 20.0% 20.0% 36.1% 25.9%

Notes: Columns (2) - (3) show percent changes in the equilibrium value of each variable from the baseline

model shown in column (1). Columns (4) and (5) show the actual percent changes observed in the U.S. over

two di§erent time periods.

in rents that is quite close to the growth in rents observed in the data. As noted above,

the actual increase in the house price-rent ratio from 1995 to 2005 was about 36 percent, so

a plausible calibration of the model can account for over one-half of the observed increase.

These results suggest that the changes in the interest rate and required down payment observed in the United States had a substantial impact on the price-rent ratio. In addition,

the ability of our model to simultaneously predict large increases in house prices and sluggish rents is consistent with recent developments in the U.S. housing market and stands in

marked contrast with predictions of simpler models of the housing market which typically

imply that equilibrium house prices and rents change in the same direction and at the same

rate.

In our model, holding house prices and rents constant, when the mortgage interest rate

and required down payment fall, the demand curve for rental property shifts inward because

households switch from renting to owning as homeownership becomes more a§ordable. At

the same time, the supply curve for rental property shifts to the right because when  and

r decrease, more households are able to a§ord down payments and mortgage payments on

rental properties. In addition, since both the mortgage rate and rate of return on deposits fall

when interest rates decrease, investing in rental property becomes more attractive relative

to the alternative of holding bank deposits. The net result of the declining demand and

increasing supply in the rental market is a decrease in the equilibrium rent. At the same

time, the demand for housing (or homeownership) increases when the interest rate and the

2005.

34
required down payment decrease because more households can a§ord to purchase homes,

and existing homeowners can a§ord larger homes. Given that the supply of housing is Öxed,

the equilibrium house price rises. It follows that the price-rent ratio increases as the house

price increases and rent falls in response to the change in fundamentals.

Finally, we examine the robustness of these results to relaxing the assumption of a Öxed

stock of housing. A 5-percent increase in the supply of housing, which is roughly in line with

the data, combined with a lowered interest rate (from 4 to 2 percent) and down payment

requirement (from 20 to 15 percent) leads to a proportional decrease in both the house price

and rent, and does not a§ect the sensitivity of the price-rent ratio to changes in  and r.

Regardless of whether the housing stock is held Öxed or allowed to increase by 5 percent,

the price rent ratio increases by 20 percent when interest rate is lowered and down payment

requirement is relaxed.

6 Transitional Dynamics

Up to this point, we have conÖned our analysis to comparisons of di§erent steady state

economies. This section studies the transitional dynamics of the housing market between

two steady states. We assume that the economy is initially in a steady state that corresponds

to the baseline calibration of the model, where the interest rate is 4 percent and the required

down payment is 20 percent. Starting from this initial steady state, the interest rate and

required down payment unexpectedly and permanently fall to r = 0:02 and  = 0:15. We

solve for equilibrium movements of house prices and rents along the perfect foresight transition path that ends at the new steady state. Along the transition path, all agents correctly

forecast the sequence of equilibrium house prices and rents which leads to the new steady

state, and the housing market clears in each time period.26

Figure 7 shows the transition path for the house price, rent, and price-rent ratio. In the

Örst period of the transition, both the house price and rent overshoot their long-run steady

state values: the house price increases by 25 percent while the rent increases by 15 percent.

Although the price-rent ratio does not overshoot, it jumps by 9 percent on impact. After the

initial spike in the house price and rent, the equilibrium prices decline gradually over time,

and the price-rent ratio steadily increases to its new steady state level.

26Appendix C describes the solution of the model along the transition path in more detail.

35
5 10 15 20 25 30

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

Period of the transition path

House Price

5 10 15 20 25 30

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

Period of the transition path

Rent

5 10 15 20 25 30

8

10

12

14

16

18

Period of the transition path

Price−Rent Ratio

Figure 7: Transition Paths: Simultaneous Decrease in Interest Rate and Minimum Downpayment

Why do house price and rent overshoot? Several mechanisms are jointly operative. The

Örst mechanism is a portfolio reallocation between deposits and housing by households. The

initial steady state features a relatively large amount of Önancial wealth (deposits), owing to

the high (4 percent) rate of return and relatively high (20 percent) down payment requirement. An unexpected decline in the interest rate and the down payment requirement give

households an incentive to shift their portfolios from deposits into housing, since the rate of

return to deposits falls, the mortgage cost of Önancing falls, and housing consumption becomes more attractive relative to saving. In conjunction with this, a capital gains mechanism

is operative. The initial increase in the house price allows existing homeowners to capitalize

gains, trade-up, and move to larger homes. This mechanism operates in the same manner as

the one discussed in Ortalo-MagnÈ and Rady (2006), where a Öxed supply of start-up homes

bolsters the overshooting relative to our model. As a result, housing demand rises sharply,

but there is a Öxed housing supply, so the surge of funds into housing drives up the house

36
price. Turning to the rental market, two forces jointly operate: on one hand, the lower interest rate reduces the cost of rental investment; on the other, the higher house price increases

it. Initially, the house price e§ect dominates, and rent increases to compensate landlords for

the increased cost of rental space. Initially, the homeownership rate stays roughly constant,

in part due to higher shelter cost in both the homeownership and rental markets.

The initial spikes in the house price and rent are not sustainable as a long run equilibrium,

because they are fueled by the large amount of Önancial wealth that households accumulated

in the high interest rate steady state. Over time, the house price and rent decrease as

households draw down their Önancial wealth, and live for more time periods with the low

interest rate. Moreover, as the overshooting in prices fades away, more renters shift into

homeownership, the homeownership rate rises to its new long run equilibrium level, and

rents fall because of the reduced demand for rental space.

7 Conclusion

This paper develops a dynamic equilibrium model of the housing market in which both

house prices and rents, not merely their ratio, are determined endogenously. We use the

model to study the relationship between the house price-rent ratio and fundamentals such

as the interest rate, required down payment, and income. This analysis is motivated by the

fact that although the price-rent ratio is a widely used economic indicator, its determinants

are not well understood. Without a theoretical understanding of how the price-rent ratio

is determined, it is not possible to determine whether observed changes in the relationship

between house prices and rents reáect changing fundamentals or an asset price bubble.

Building on existing models of the housing market, our model incorporates uninsurable

earnings risk, incomplete markets, preferential tax treatment of homeowners and landlords,

and lumpy transactions costs. Households choose between renting and owning housing as

a means of securing shelter services, and also have the option of investing in housing to

earn rental income. A key feature of our model is that both the house price and rent are

determined in equilibrium by the interactions of households who have heterogeneous levels

of income and wealth. When fundamentals change, shifts in the willingness of households

to supply property on the rental market have a large impact on the equilibrium house price

and rent. This aspect of the model is empirically supported by the observed expansion of

37
the buy-to-lease segment of the housing market during the housing boom.

We document that the interest rate and minimum required down payment reached very

low levels by historical standards during the housing boom of 1995-2005, and use our model

as a tool to quantitatively evaluate the e§ects of changes in these fundamentals on the pricerent ratio. The model predicts that the combination of low interest rates and reduced down

payment requirements leads to a large increase in the rational expectations equilibrium pricerent ratio. In fact, changes in these fundamentals are capable of explaining approximately

one-half of the 36 percent increase in the price-rent ratio observed between 1995 and 2005. At

the same time, changes in fundamentals generate increases in homeownership and household

debt that are consistent with recent U.S. experience.

Throughout our analysis, we have maintained the assumption of rational expectations

about future house prices and rents. Piazzesi and Schneider (2009) examine household

beliefs during the housing boom, and develop a tractable search model where optimistic

traders can push up house prices. Consistent with our focus on credit conditions, these

authors Önd that in the 2003 Michigan Survey of Consumers, the primary reason reported

by households for believing that it was a good time to buy a house was favorable credit

conditions. Later in the boom, they Önd that the proportion of households who believed

that house prices would continue to increase reached a 25-year high. It is well recognized that

incorporating this type of information about expectations into a model such as ours raises

many di¢ cult conceptual and practical questions. As such, we leave this extension for future

work. However, our model of the housing and rental markets illustrates that the observed

divergence between house prices and rents does not necessarily indicate that the run-up in

the price-rent ratio was completely unsupported by market fundamentals. In contrast, we

show that changes in fundamentals, such as interest rates and the required down payment,

can have a quantitatively large impact on the equilibrium price-rent ratio.

8 Appendix A: Sensitivity Analysis (not for publication)

This section examines the e§ects of transaction costs, preferential tax treatment of homeowners and landlords, and di§erential depreciation of rented and owner-occupied properties

38
on the level of the price-rent ratio and its responsiveness to interest rate changes.27 Our

results highlight the important role that these features of the model play in determining

demand for housing and rental properties, as well as rental property supply.

Table 13 shows the percent change in the equilibrium house price, rent, and price-rent

ratio from the baseline economy under two counterfactual tax systems. In the Örst counterfactual, shown in column (1), the mortgage interest and property tax deductions for

owner-occupiers are eliminated.28 The elimination of these tax deductions decreases the demand for homeownership by increasing its cost, leading to a 4:9 percent decrease in the house

price relative to the benchmark case where tax deductions are available. At the same time,

the rent increases by 1:3 percent, since some households switch from ownership to renting

when tax advantages to homeownership are eliminated. The price-rent ratio falls by 6:3

percent. Column (2) of Table 13 shows that eliminating landlord tax deductions in addition

Table 13: The E§ect of Homeowner and Landlord Tax Deductions on the Price-Rent Ratio

(1) (2)

No Homeowner Deductions No Homeowner and Landlord Deductions

House price -4.9% -3.1%

Rent 1.3% 10.2 %

Price-rent ratio -6.3% -12.1%

to homeowner tax deductions causes a 3.1 percent decrease in the house price, a 10.2 percent

increase in the rent, and a 12.1 percent decrease in the price-rent ratio. The large relative

price change between renting and owning is primarily driven by a sharp reduction in the

supply of rental property caused by the increased cost of rental investment. In equilibrium,

the percentage of landlords in the economy declines by approximately one-third when the

landlord tax deductions are eliminated.

The preferential tax treatment of homeowners and landlords also increases the responsiveness of the price-rent ratio to changes in interest rates. A decrease in the interest rate

from 4 percent to 2 percent causes a 22 percent increase in the price-rent ratio under the

baseline tax system with tax advantages to homeownership. When homeowner tax deductions are eliminated, this response falls to 14 percent. From the point of view of tax policy,

27We focus on the interest rate in this section because changes in taxes and transactions costs have little

impact on the responsiveness of the price-rent ratio to changes in the required downpayment.

28Landlords, however, can still deduct expenses and mortgage interest payments associated with the rented

space.

39
this result suggests that the preferential tax treatment of housing in the U.S. causes the house

price-rent ratio to be more volatile than it would be if these deductions were eliminated.

Moving to the role of transactions costs, when the costs of buying (

b

) and selling (

s

) a

house are reduced from their benchmark values of 7.5 and 2.5 percent to zero, the equilibrium

house price increases by 32 percent, the equilibrium rent increases by 24 percent, and the

price-rent ratio increases by approximately 7 percent. These e§ects arise because eliminating

transactions costs simultaneously increases the demand for housing and decreases the supply

of rental property. The increase in the housing demand is partly caused by an income e§ect:

agents are wealthier, all else constant, in an economy without transactions costs. At the

same time, the rental supply declines because in the absence of transactions costs, households

choose to downsize instead of renting out their home in the rental market when hit by an

adverse income shock. Overall, the fraction of households that trade their house in each

period (i.e., h

0 6= h) rises from 2 to 4 percent when transaction costs are eliminated.

Transactions costs also impact the responsiveness of the price-rent ratio to changes in the

interest rate. In the economy without transactions costs, when the interest rate falls from

4 percent to 2 percent, the price-rent ratio increases by 16 percent versus 22 percent in the

economy with transaction costs. These results demonstrate the importance of accounting

for the lumpy transactions costs incurred during home sales and purchases when modeling

the housing market. Ignoring these transactions costs would lead to an understatement of

the responsiveness of the price-rent ratio to changes in interest rates and would lead to an

overstatement of the level of the price-rent ratio.

To highlight the important e§ect of di§erential depreciation of rental and owner occupied

properties on the price-rent ratio, we compare the baseline economy where rental properties

appreciate at a higher rate (r = 0:037) than owner-occupied space (0 = 0:025) to a counterfactual economy where rented space depreciates at the same rate as owner-occupied space

(0 = r = 0:025). When the depreciation rate of rental property is reduced, the cost of rental

investment declines, leading to an increased demand for investment properties. Demand for

housing rises, as does rental supply. The equilibrium results are an 8.6 percent increase in

the house price, a 6 percent decrease in the rent, and a 15.7 percent increase in the price-rent

ratio. At the same time, a reduction in the depreciation rate of rental properties increases

the responsiveness of the price-rent ratio to interest rate changes. When r falls from 4 to 2

percent, the price-rent ratio increases by 26 percent compared to 20 percent in the baseline

40
economy where rental properties depreciate at a higher rate than owner-occupied homes.

9 Appendix B: Solving the Model (not for publication)

9.1 Finding Equilibrium in the Housing and Rental Markets

Equilibrium in the housing and rental markets is formally deÖned by the conditions presented

in Section 3. In practice, the market clearing rent (



) and house price (q



) are found by

Önding the (q



; ) pair that simultaneously clear both the housing and shelter markets in a

simulated economy. The market clearing conditions for a simulated cross section of N agents

are

X

N

i=1

h

0

i

(q



; jx) = H (15)

X

N

i=1

s

0

i

(q



; jx) = H: (16)

The optimal housing and shelter demands for each agent are functions of the market clearing

steady state prices and the agents other state variables (x). Solving for the equilibrium of

the housing market is a time consuming process because it involves repeatedly re-solving the

optimization problem at potential equilibrium prices and simulating data to check for market

clearing until the equilibrium prices are found. The algorithm outlined in the following

section exploits theoretical properties of the model such as downward sloping demand when

searching for market clearing prices. Taking advantage of these properties dramatically

decreases the amount of time required to Önd the equilibrium relative to a more naive search

algorithm.

9.2 The Algorithm

Let qk represent the kth guess of the market clearing house price, let k represent a guess

of the equilibrium rent, and let k(qk) represent the rent that clears the market for housing

conditional on house price qk. The algorithm that searches for equilibrium is based on the

41
following excess demand functions

EDh

k

(qk; k) = X

N

i=1

h

0

i

(qk; kjx)  H (17)

EDs

k

(qk; k) = X

N

i=1

s

0

i

(qk; kjx)  H: (18)

The equilibrium prices q

 and 

simultaneously clear the markets for housing and shelter,

so

EDh

k

(q



; ) = 0 (19)

EDs

k

(q



; ) = 0: (20)

The following algorithm is used to Önd the market clearing house price and rent.

1. Make an initial guess of the market clearing house price qk:

2. Search for the rent k(qk) which clears the market for owned housing conditional on

the current guess of the equilibrium house price, qk. The problem is to Önd the value of

k(qk) such that EDh

k

(qk; k(qk)) = 0. This step of the algorithm requires re-solving the

agentsíoptimization problem at each trial value of k(qk), simulating data using the

policy functions, and checking for market clearing in the simulated data. One useful

property of the excess demand function EDh

k

(qk; k(qk)) is that conditional on qk, it

is a strictly decreasing function of k. Based on this property, k(qk) can be found

e¢ ciently using bisection.

3. Given that the housing market clears at prices (qk; k(qk)), check if this pair of prices

also clears the market for shelter by evaluating EDs

k

(qk; k(qk)).

(a) If EDs

k

(qk; k(qk)) < 0 and k = 1, the initial guess q1 is too high, so set qk+1 = qk"

and go to step (2). This initial house price guess q1 is too high if EDs

k

(qk; k(qk)) <

0 because EDs

k

(qk; k(qk)) is decreasing in qk.

(b) If EDs

k

(qk; k(qk)) > 0 set k = k + 1 and qk+1 = qk + " and go to step (2).

(c) If EDs

k

(qk; k(qk)) = 0, the equilibrium prices are q

 = qk;  = k(qk), so stop.

42
9.3 Solving for the Transition Path

This appendix describes the solution of the model along the perfect foresight transition path

between two steady states. In the Örst time period, the economy is in the initial, high

interest rate, high down payment steady state. In time period t = 2, the interest rate

and minimum down payment unexpectedly, and permanently, decline. Let T represent the

number of time periods that it takes for the economy to converge to the Önal steady state.29

Let (q



; ) and (q

; ) represent the initial and Önal steady state equilibrium house price

and rent. The transition path is a sequence of prices, fqt; tg

T

t=1; along which the optimal

decisions of households clear both the markets for shelter and housing. Solving the household

optimization problem along the transition path requires adding time to the state variables

listed in the steady state problem described in section 3 because both current-period prices

and future prices a§ect householdsíoptimal decisions. Given a sequence of prices fqt; tg

T

t=1,

the dynamic programming problem is solved recursively, moving backwards in time from

time period T.

The algorithm begins by setting the market clearing prices in periods t = 1 and t = T

equal to their initial and Önal steady state values, so q1 = q



, 1 = 



; qT = q



, T = 



.

Next, a guess is made for the remaining prices along the transition path, fqt; tg

T 1

t=2 : The

transition path is found using the following algorithm:

1. Solve the household problem recursively, moving backward from period T, taking the

sequence of prices fqt; tg

T

t=1 as given.

2. Use the optimal decision rules to simulate data from the model for each period along

the transition path.

3. Check for market clearing in each time period using the conditions listed in section 3.

If markets clear in all time periods, stop because the transition path has been found.

If markets do not clear, make a new guess of the transition path and go back to step

1.

29 In practice, we set T = 30, but Önd that the economy converges to the new steady state after 25 periods.

The computed equiibrium is unchanged by extending the horizon to T > 30.

43
10 Appendix C: SCF Data (not for publication)

The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) 2007 is used to construct the moments summarized

in Table 4. The SCF is a triennial survey of the balance sheet, pension, income, and other

demographic characteristics of U.S. families. The total housing wealth is constructed as the

total sum of all residential real estate owned by a household, and is taken to represent the

housing wealth qh0in the model. Secured debt (i.e., debt secured by primary or other

residence) is used as a model analog of the collateralized debt, m0. The model analogue of

the total net worth (i.e., d

0 + qh0  m0

) is constructed as the sum of householdís deposits in

the transaction accounts and the housing wealth (as deÖned above), net of the secured debt.

The total household income reported in the SCF is taken to represent the total household

income deÖned in the model as y = w + rd0 + I

h

0>s[(h

0  s)]: Data and the STATA code are

available at request.

44
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