Bargaining Over Residential Real Estate: Evidence from England

Abstract

This paper presents and investigates a new data set of individual residential property transactions in England. The main novelty of the data is the record of all listing price changes and all offers ever made on a property since it appears on the market, as well as all the visits by potential buyers for a subset of the sample. We analyze individual seller and potential buyers behavior within property transaction histories. This leads us to establish a number of stylized facts pertaining specifically to the timing and terms of agreement in housing transactions, and more generally, to the sequence of events that occur from initial listing to sale agreement.

Note: Please note that this paper has been updated to PIER 02-023.