Emotions, Uncertainty, Gender and Residential Real Estate Prices: Evidence from a Bubble Market

This paper investigates the impact of valuation uncertainty on residential property prices near the peak of a bubble. Our hand-collected sample comprises the sequence of bids and gender of the participating bidders at Irish residential real estate auctions, prior to the collapse of a bubble, which when it burst had disastrous implications for the banking system and the economy itself. Portfolios of practitioner- and hedonic pricing model-selected self-similar properties provide benchmark property price estimates and uncertainty is calculated by reference to various measures of dispersion related to prices achieved for comparable properties. We find, in aggregate, auction winners do not shade bids with increased valuation uncertainty. In addition, winning female bidders, in contrast to findings in the extant literature across a wide range of academic disciplines, including experimental bubble markets, are not less risk averse, or more likely to shy away from competitive situations than their male counterparts.