Tracking Home-Owners’ Sentiments: Subjective Indices and Convergent Validity

Sofie R. Waltl
Vienna University of Economics and Business & Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research

Anthony Lepinteur
University of Luxembourg

The paper was awarded the 2020 NOeG Young Economist Award and the 2021 IARIW Nancy and Richard Ruggles Memorial Prize.

Abstract

Surveys regularly ask home-owners to estimate the current market value of their dwelling.
We develop suitable techniques to construct hedonic and repeat-sales style house price indices from these owner-estimated-values and link the resulting series to a large set of quality-adjusted residential property price indices estimated from transaction data allowing us to perform various convergent validity tests. Based on results for 20 countries, several decades and different OEV elicitation techniques, we conclude that the “wisdom of the home-owner crowd” is sufficient to study objective house price dynamics. Yet, surveys fail to accurately measure house price levels.

JEL.: C43; D90; E32; R30

Keywords: Housing Markets; Subjective Data; Convergent Validity; House Price Indices

Dissemination

Waltl, S. R. & Lepinteur, A. (2023) Tracking Home-Owners’ Sentiments: Subjective Indices and Convergent Validity. Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics https://doi.org/10.1007/s11146-023-09949-w

Presentations: [International Conference on Real Estate Statistics, Eurostat, Luxembourg, 2019] [LISER, Luxembourg, 2019] [Vienna University of Economics and Business, Podersdorf, Austria, 2019] [University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK, 2020] [NOeG Conference, Austria, 2020] [The Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria, 2020] [The University of Melbourne, Australia, 2020] [University of Bonn, 2020][12th Real Estate Markets and Capital Markets (ReCapNet) Conference at ZEW Mannheim, Germany, 2020][AREUEA-ASSA, Chicago, 2021][European Central Bank, 2021][36th General Conference of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth (IARIW), 2021]

Media Coverage: Lëtzebuerger Gemengen