Home Away from Home? Foreign Demand and London House Prices

75 Pages Posted: 12 Nov 2013 Last revised: 29 Nov 2016

See all articles by Cristian Badarinza

Cristian Badarinza

National University of Singapore (NUS)

Tarun Ramadorai

Imperial College London; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)

Date Written: November 29, 2016

Abstract

The infrequent nature of crises means that pure time-series methods struggle to distinguish the effects of capital flight on asset prices from a wide range of alternative drivers. We present a new cross-sectional approach, which is motivated by the insight that investors may have different "preferred habitats" within a broad asset class. We apply the method to the question of whether foreign capital is responsible for residential real estate price movements in global cities such as London and New York, especially during crises. Applying our method on large databases of housing transactions over the past two decades, we find that foreign risk strongly affects London house prices. The effects are long-lasting, and are associated with both safe-haven effects and immigration.

Keywords: house prices, foreign demand, safe-haven, London, political risk, price-pressure

JEL Classification: C53, D80, E47, F21, G12, G15

Suggested Citation

Badarinza, Cristian and Ramadorai, Tarun, Home Away from Home? Foreign Demand and London House Prices (November 29, 2016). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2353124 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2353124

Cristian Badarinza

National University of Singapore (NUS) ( email )

1E Kent Ridge Road
NUHS Tower Block Level 7
Singapore, 119228
Singapore

Tarun Ramadorai (Contact Author)

Imperial College London ( email )

South Kensington Campus
Exhibition Road
London, Greater London SW7 2AZ
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://www.tarunramadorai.com

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

London
United Kingdom

European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) ( email )

c/o the Royal Academies of Belgium
Rue Ducale 1 Hertogsstraat
1000 Brussels
Belgium

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