Real Interest Regimes and Real Estate Performance: A Comparison of UK and Us Markets

Abstract

Linear models of market performance may be misspecified if the market is subdivided into distinct regimes exhibiting different behavior. Price movements in the United States real estate investment trusts and United Kingdom property companies markets are explored using a threshold autoregressive (TAR) model with regimes defined by the real rate of interest. In both U.S. and U.K. markets, distinctive behavior emerges, with the TAR model offering better predictive power than a more conventional linear autoregressive model. The research points to the possibility of developing trading rules to exploit the systematically different behavior across regimes.

JEL Classification: L85