A vector autoregression (VAR) model of housing starts and housing price in Hong Kong

Abstract

It is observed that there are many different models about housing price. Yet, this is relatively smaller number of studies about housing starts. This thesis is an empirical study to work out the relationship between housing starts, housing price and other economic and policy instrumental factors. To achieve this objective, a Vector Autoregression (VAR) model is built since there is inter-relationship between housing starts and housing price.

By applying previous models filled with the research gaps, a new VAR model about the housing starts and housing price in Hong Kong is built. Four hypotheses are tested in the thesis. The first and second hypotheses are if housing starts and housing price are affected by the given exogenous variables. The third hypothesis is if the past movement of economic variables reliable in predicting future values of that variable. The last hypothesis is to test if the “high-land-price” policy really pushes up the housing price.

The empirical results found in this thesis are a little bit different to previous studies in Hong Kong and overseas. Factors which are frequently proved to be statistically significant are not significant in this study (e.g. interest rate and tender price index). Developers in Hong Kong are found to care more about the future market rather than the current market conditions. Many factors do not exert an influence directly on housing starts but indirectly through their impact to the change of the change of the housing price.

It is interesting to know that housing starts react negatively to a change in housing price. An increase in the change of housing price is a bullish signal for the developers. They will hold the land for a while until they expect the peak is coming upon the completion of a project. Therefore, the empirical results suggest the government has to introduce some policies which will lead to a fall in housing price in case that she wants to increase the supply of new private residential housing. Developers will accelerate the applications to commence construction when they expect there will be a downward trend in the housing price (which is shown by a negative change of the housing price..