Housing Price and Population Changes: Growing vs Shrinking Cities

Abstract

Housing prices in the United States experienced a significant meltdown during the Great Recession. Since then, the housing market has seen a nationwide recovery, even over-heating in some regions. In this paper, we look back at that era and study the possible impact of population changes on housing markets in 2010-2017. Our focus is not to look at how the housing market recovered from the recession per se. Rather, our study is to look at the relationship between population changes and their impact on housing prices, even during the recovery period. In addition to the population variable, our model employs a few other factors known to affect housing prices, such as the unemployment rate, the GDP per capita, mortgage rates and the housing supply.