La crise s’est-elle accompagnée d’un sous-investissement dans l’immobilier résidentiel dans les pays de la zone euro ?

Following the crisis that started in 2008, many property markets saw prices fall, after price to income ratios peaked, with contrasted movements in residential investment.?The possible existence of underinvestment is studied in four euro area countries: Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands.?Spain and, as a non-euro area example, the United Kingdom will also be analysed, though on a more succinct basis.?A new method is developed and compared to traditional filtering methods: it uses deviations in a long-term relationship between investment and a real estate Tobin?s Q, comparing prices to investment costs.?Although investment opened a negative gap compared to the long-term trend for all these countries around 2008-2009, the rebound was more marked in Germany, and in France where it was followed by a new inflexion in 2012.?To give an order of magnitude, the investment deficit towards the end of 2013 in France, according to a Hodrick-Prescott method, would be around one tenth of residential investment in volume and 0.4 pp of GDP. This can be compared to the peak over-investment in early 2008.?For Italy and the Netherlands, a more marked underinvestment can be identified post-2008.?It offsets or even goes beyond the pre-2008 over-investment. Classification JEL : E22, E32, R31.