Household Debt and House Prices-at-risk: A Tale of Two Countries

Download or read book Household Debt and House Prices-at-risk: A Tale of Two Countries written by Mr.Adrian Alter and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2020-02-28 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To identify and quantify downside risks to housing markets, we apply the house price-at-risk methodology to a sample of 37 cities across the United States and Canada using quarterly data from 1983 to 2018. This paper finds that downside risks to housing markets in the United States have seemingly fallen over the past decade, while having increased in Canada. Supply-side drivers, valuation, household debt, and financial conditions jointly play a key role in forecasting house price risks. In addition, capital flows are found to be significantly associated with future downside risks to major housing markets, but the net effect depends on the type of flows and varies across cities and forecast horizons. Using micro-level data, we identify households vulnerable to potential housing shocks and assess the riskiness of household debt.