Housing price uncertainty and housing prices in the UK in a time-varying environment

Abstract

This study offers a new perspective on the dynamic causal relationship between housing price uncertainty and housing prices in a time-varying environment for the UK for the first time in the literature. This study aims to investigate whether housing market uncertainty has any time-varying effect on housing prices between 1998:Q1 and 2019:Q2. A key distinction of this study is the use of a news-based housing price uncertainty index. This index measures uncertainty pertaining especially to the housing market in the UK. To this end, we include two main classes using time-varying parameter, rolling estimation and recursive rolling estimation for robustness analysis. Furthermore, we add economic policy uncertainty into the models to see whether housing market uncertainty has predictive power after controlling for economic policy uncertainty because housing market uncertainty may be largely driven by economic policy uncertainty and key macro-economic indicators. It turns out that there is a part of housing market uncertainty beyond economic policy uncertainty that helps to predict housing prices in UK. These outcomes are reinforced by the results of time-varying Granger causality tests that real housing price index is largely driven by the housing price uncertainty index. Furthermore, it is found that the uncertainty variables have a negative impact on real housing prices. This position calls for insolation in the housing market in UK from externalities such as housing price uncertainty.