Trading volume in the housing market around land auctions events

Abstract

Land and housing markets are separated, with the traders in the land market being developers and those in the housing market being end-users for self-occupation and investors for investment. The two markets, however, are closely related because demand for residential sites is derived from demand for housing. With this close relationship, any signals from the land market should be impounded to the housing market. Land auction, which is the most commonly adopted land disposal method in Hong Kong, is a significant event in the land market. The land auction events should contain market signals affecting trading decisions of homebuyers and sellers in the housing market in a similar way that corporate earnings announcements of a listed company affect the trading of its shares in the stock market. This study investigates how land auctions affect trading volume in the secondary housing market in Hong Kong. Hypotheses are developed based on previous studies on the impacts of corporate earnings announcements on trading volume in stock markets with modifications to take into account the differences between housing and stock markets. The characteristics of housing market that are important in formulating the hypotheses are high transaction cost and market incompleteness (e.g. absence of short selling). In addition, lumpiness and indivisibility of housing, which make market participants risk-averse, also play important roles in the development of the hypotheses in this study. The research results indicate that greater dispersion in prior beliefs before the land auctions is associated with lower trading volume in the housing spot market. Unexpected land auction outcomes, be they positive or negative, are also negatively related to trading volume in the housing market, with the negative outcomes exerting a strong downward pressure on trading volume. These findings are contradictory to the findings commonly found in most finance literature about trading volume around corporate earnings announcements which assumes negligible transaction cost but consistent with findings in Barron and Karpoff (2004). The deviation from previous studies of stock market can be explained by the risk-averse behaviour of market participants, high transaction cost and market incompleteness in the housing market. Although empirical data in Hong Kong are used, the implications are general and should be applicable to other housing markets with similar characteristics. This study also sheds light on how increase in transaction cost and restriction on short selling may affect trading volume around corporate earnings announcements in the stock market.