German House Prices and the Effect of Monetary Policy

Download or read book German House Prices and the Effect of Monetary Policy written by Leisheng Wang and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: German house price has always been relatively quite stable during the last thirty years. However, according to 2013 October German Bundesbank report, housing prices in several German cities could be overvalued by between 5 percentages and 10 percentages. And the Bundesbank warned that this price level cannot be justified based on fundamental factors. Based on the unit root approach, we also detect the existence of rational bubble in German Residential housing market. There might be many reasons behind this overvaluation, but does the loose monetary policy adopted by ECB since 2008 financial crisis contribute to this overvaluation as well? The increase in money supply and the decrease of interest rate, which one plays a more important role for the housing price increase? By focusing on different economic factors that could contribute to house price rising, like stock market index, general household disposable income, GDP, money supply and mortgage rate, we try to analyze their contribution and effects on housing price with the aid of VAR model. The result of the VAR model shows that stock market index, disposable income and mortgage rate all contribute to housing price increase. However, based on Taylor rule, actually, the too low interest rate is the main driving factors for the rapid increase in housing price during last three years. As German monetary policy is largely determined by European Central Bank, it means the price increase might continue in the near future and the risk of overvaluation cannot be ignored.