House price affordability, the global financial crisis and the (ir)relevance of mortgage rates

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Date
2019-08-05
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Taylor and Francis Group on behalf of the Regional Studies Association
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© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Although house prices and wages are both influenced by distinct factors that shape their own evolutions, they are also intrinsically connected through house price affordability. Further, macroeconomic policies centred around adjustments in the mortgage rate are of prime importance in ensuring that the housing market does not overheat. This study contributes to the understanding of the link between housing market affordability and mortgage rates by investigating this association across regions of New Zealand using quarterly data between 2000 and 2017. Applications of trajectory regression reveal that the global financial crisis affected regional house price affordability asymmetrically and there was no statistically significant correlation between house price affordability and mortgage rates.
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Regional Studies, Regional Science, 2019, 6 (1), pp. 405 - 420
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