IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jrefec/v63y2021i4d10.1007_s11146-020-09791-4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Price Rigidity and Vacancy Rates: The Framing Effect on Rental Housing Markets

Author

Listed:
  • I-Chun Tsai

    (National University of Kaohsiung)

Abstract

This paper proposes a new explanation for housing rent price rigidity. When high inflation or low inflation occurs, the bargaining process for new rent price represents negotiations representing increasing or diminishing utility for landlords. Based on framing effect theory, this study hypothesized that utility increasing-bargaining causes landlords to choose to give greater concessions and prefer short-term contracts. Although the income obtained from single contracts is comparatively lower, the high transaction volume (number of lease contracts) causes a reduction in the number of vacant properties and a higher frequency of price adjustments. Conversely, when low inflation occurs, landlords face utility decreasing-bargaining, reduce their concessions, and exhibit a preference for long-term contracts, thereby leading to an increase in the number of vacant houses and a lower frequency of price adjustments. Using US rental market data, this study explains asymmetric rent volatility and changes in the vacancy rate, and provides related evidence supporting the hypothesis that this rental market phenomenon is caused by an inflation illusion.

Suggested Citation

  • I-Chun Tsai, 2021. "Price Rigidity and Vacancy Rates: The Framing Effect on Rental Housing Markets," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 63(4), pages 547-564, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jrefec:v:63:y:2021:i:4:d:10.1007_s11146-020-09791-4
    DOI: 10.1007/s11146-020-09791-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11146-020-09791-4
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11146-020-09791-4?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter C. B. Phillips & Shuping Shi & Jun Yu, 2015. "Testing For Multiple Bubbles: Historical Episodes Of Exuberance And Collapse In The S&P 500," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1043-1078, November.
    2. Cheung, Yan-leung & Tsang, Shu-ki & Mak, Sui-choi, 1995. "The Causal Relationships between Residential Property Prices and Rentals in Hong Kong: 1982-1991," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 23-35, January.
    3. Bar-Isaac, Heski & Gavazza, Alessandro, 2015. "Brokers’ contractual arrangements in the Manhattan residential rental market," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 73-82.
    4. Shimizu, Chihiro & Nishimura, Kiyohiko G. & Watanabe, Tsutomu, 2010. "Residential rents and price rigidity: Micro structure and macro consequences," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 282-299, June.
    5. Kashiwagi, Masanori, 2014. "A search-theoretic model of the rental and homeownership markets," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 33-47.
    6. Gabriel, Stuart A. & Nothaft, Frank E., 2001. "Rental Housing Markets, the Incidence and Duration of Vacancy, and the Natural Vacancy Rate," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 121-149, January.
    7. David Genesove & Christopher Mayer, 2001. "Loss Aversion and Seller Behavior: Evidence from the Housing Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(4), pages 1233-1260.
    8. Miceli, Thomas J. & Sirmans, C.F., 2013. "Efficiency rents: A new theory of the natural vacancy rate for rental housing," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 20-24.
    9. Morris A. Davis & Andreas Lehnert & Robert F. Martin, 2008. "The Rent‐Price Ratio For The Aggregate Stock Of Owner‐Occupied Housing," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 54(2), pages 279-284, June.
    10. Peter C. B. Phillips & Shuping Shi & Jun Yu, 2015. "Testing For Multiple Bubbles: Historical Episodes Of Exuberance And Collapse In The S&P 500," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 56, pages 1043-1078, November.
    11. Chihiro Shimizu & Kiyohiko G. Nishimura & Tsutomu Watanabe, 2010. "Residential Rents and Price Rigidity: Micro Structure and Macro Consequences," NBER Chapters, in: Sticky Prices and Inflation Dynamics (NBER-TCER-CEPR), pages 282-299, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Hoffmann, Johannes & Kurz-Kim, Jeong-Ryeol, 2006. "Consumer price adjustment under the microscope: Germany in a period of low inflation," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2006,16, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    13. Stuart A. Gabriel & Frank E. Nothaft, 1988. "Rental Housing Markets and the Natural Vacancy Rate," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 16(4), pages 419-429, December.
    14. Eric Belsky & John L. Goodman, Jr., 1996. "Explaining the Vacancy Rate - Rent Paradox of the 1980s," Journal of Real Estate Research, American Real Estate Society, vol. 11(3), pages 309-323.
    15. Vogelsang, Timothy J., 1997. "Wald-Type Tests for Detecting Breaks in the Trend Function of a Dynamic Time Series," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(6), pages 818-848, December.
    16. Ernst Fehr & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2001. "Does Money Illusion Matter?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1239-1262, December.
    17. David Genesove, 2003. "The Nominal Rigidity of Apartment Rents," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 844-853, November.
    18. Engelhardt, Gary V., 2003. "Nominal loss aversion, housing equity constraints, and household mobility: evidence from the United States," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 171-195, January.
    19. Nathan S. Balke, 2000. "Credit and Economic Activity: Credit Regimes and Nonlinear Propagation of Shocks," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(2), pages 344-349, May.
    20. Rosen, Kenneth T & Smith, Lawrence B, 1983. "The Price-Adjustment Process for Rental Housing and the Natural Vacancy Rate," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(4), pages 779-786, September.
    21. MacKinnon, James G, 1996. "Numerical Distribution Functions for Unit Root and Cointegration Tests," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(6), pages 601-618, Nov.-Dec..
    22. Goodhart, Charles, 2001. "What Weight Should Be Given to Asset Prices in the Measurement of Inflation?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 111(472), pages 335-356, June.
    23. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1986. "Rational Choice and the Framing of Decisions," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 251-278, October.
    24. Levin, Irwin P. & Schneider, Sandra L. & Gaeth, Gary J., 1998. "All Frames Are Not Created Equal: A Typology and Critical Analysis of Framing Effects," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 149-188, November.
    25. Shilling, James D. & Sirmans, C. F. & Corgel, John B., 1987. "Price adjustment process for rental office space," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 90-100, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Agarwal, Sumit & Ding, Yanhao & Kuang, Weida & Zhu, Xiao, 2023. "Are environmental punishments good news or bad news? Evidence from China," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gabriel, Stuart A. & Nothaft, Frank E., 2001. "Rental Housing Markets, the Incidence and Duration of Vacancy, and the Natural Vacancy Rate," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 121-149, January.
    2. Tyran, Jean-Robert & Stephens, Thomas A, 2012. "?At least I didn?t lose money? Nominal Loss Aversion Shapes Evaluations of Housing Transactions," CEPR Discussion Papers 9198, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Deng, Yongheng & Gabriel, Stuart A & Nothaft, Frank E, 2003. "Duration of Residence in the Rental Housing Market," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 26(2-3), pages 267-285, March-May.
    4. Suzuki, Masatomo & Asami, Yasushi & Shimizu, Chihiro, 2021. "Housing rent rigidity under downward pressure: Unit-level longitudinal evidence from Tokyo," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    5. Gallin, Joshua & Verbrugge, Randal J., 2019. "A theory of sticky rents: Search and bargaining with incomplete information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 478-519.
    6. Shu-hen Chiang, 2016. "Rising residential rents in Chinese mega cities: The role of monetary policy," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(16), pages 3493-3509, December.
    7. Patric H. Hendershott & Bryan D. MacGregor & Raymond Y.C. Tse, 2002. "Estimation of the Rental Adjustment Process," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 30(2), pages 165-183.
    8. Lerbs, Oliver & Teske, Markus, 2016. "The house price-vacancy curve," ZEW Discussion Papers 16-082, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    9. Konstantin A Kholodilin & Andreas Mense & Claus Michelsen, 2017. "The market value of energy efficiency in buildings and the mode of tenure," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(14), pages 3218-3238, November.
    10. Shimizu, Chihiro & Nishimura, Kiyohiko G. & Watanabe, Tsutomu, 2010. "Residential rents and price rigidity: Micro structure and macro consequences," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 282-299, June.
    11. Charles Ka Yui Leung & Patrick Wai Yin Cheung & Erica Jiajia Ding, 2008. "Intra-metropolitan Office Price and Trading Volume Dynamics: Evidence from Hong Kong," International Real Estate Review, Global Social Science Institute, vol. 11(2), pages 47-74.
    12. Mark Merante & Keren Mertens Horn, 2016. "Is Home Sharing Driving up Rents? Evidence from Airbnb in Boston," Working Papers 2016_03, University of Massachusetts Boston, Economics Department.
    13. Cheshire, Paul & Hilber, Christian A.L. & Koster, Hans R.A., 2018. "Empty homes, longer commutes: The unintended consequences of more restrictive local planning," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 126-151.
    14. Horn, Keren & Merante, Mark, 2017. "Is home sharing driving up rents? Evidence from Airbnb in Boston," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 14-24.
    15. Vanessa Gapriotti Nadalin, 2014. "Residential Vacancy in City Center: The Case of São Paulo," Discussion Papers 1987a, Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada - IPEA.
    16. Mei Dong & Toshiaki Shoji & Yuki Teranishi, 2020. "Search and Matching in Rental Housing Market," Working Papers on Central Bank Communication 015, University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Economics.
    17. Chang-I Hua, 2017. "A Structural Model of a Housing Market with Friction," International Real Estate Review, Global Social Science Institute, vol. 20(4), pages 397-416.
    18. Patric H. Hendershott & Bryan D. MacGregor & Raymond Y.C. Tse, 2000. "Estimating the Rental Adjustment Process," NBER Working Papers 7912, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Tsai, I-Chun, 2013. "The asymmetric impacts of monetary policy on housing prices: A viewpoint of housing price rigidity," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 405-413.
    20. Miyakoshi, Tatsuyoshi & Shimada, Junji & Li, Kui-Wai, 2016. "The impacts of the 2008 and 2011 crises on the Japan REIT market," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 30-40.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jrefec:v:63:y:2021:i:4:d:10.1007_s11146-020-09791-4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.