Bubbles, Busts and Breaks in UK Housing

Since the recent turmoil in UK housing, there has been controversy over whether house prices in the past decade have entered a bubble. While there are numerous techniques employed to investigate the presence of bubbles, testing the significance of breaks in the dynamics of prices has been utilized in other research to detect such bubbles. This is important in itself, as changing parameters in housing time series models make forecasting and portfolio management more difficult. We examine thirteen regions of the UK as well as the national home prices. The results indicate that while there were some breaks over the 2000s, more regions (and the UK as a whole) experienced breaks over the late 1980s and early 1990s. These results indicate that while there have been large price swings over the past decade, the late 1980s/early 1990s, which followed sharp changes in housing, monetary and fiscal policies, appear to be the larger boom-bust episode.