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We determine the mechanism that a rational, profit-maximizing seller would use to revise his reservation price for a heterogeneous or infrequently exchanged good. For instance, while one dimension of a home's quality may be easily determined in competitive markets (e.g., the valuation of floor size, location, etc.), other dimensions of quality may be idiosyncratic (unit specific) and unobservable by the seller (e.g., aesthetics of the home). Here, a seller of a new or infrequently exchanged housing unit may use sales success information to revise his expectation of the unit's market-determined value and hence revise his reservation price. The rational seller will, upon arrival of the first buyer inspecting the unit, determine a sequence of reservation prices for this and expected subsequent buyers. This price sequence falls for subsequent buyers and starts from a lower initial price if the first buyer arrives later than expected. Through this mechanism, we offer an explanation for price dispersion and vacancy durations in housing markets. While we explicitly model the real estate market here, this price revision mechanism is also applicable to rental markets, labor markets, used car markets, and other markets characterized by heterogeneity and infrequent sales. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

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An equilibrium model of search in a spatially differentiated rental housing market is formulated that predicts both rent dispersion and equilibrium vacancies. The equilibrium rent distribution is determined on the landlord's (rental supply) side given tenants' search strategies. Then tenants' optimal search strategy, denned by the share of the market a tenant searches, is determined given the costs and benefits of search and the distribution of landlords' rents. The equations of supply and demand for rental units are then combined to derive a costly information, free-entry Nash equilibrium in the market rents. Finally, the sensitivity of equilibrium vacancies and rents to changes in search costs and other exogenous parameters is explored. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

We formulate a model that explains vacancy durations arising from lags in matches between the suppliers and demanders of housing units. We emphasize rental housing markets in this exposition although the model could be extended to competitive or noncompetitive rental or home-ownership markets. In the case of rental markets, if tenants do not immediately inform landlords upon initiating search for a new unit, landlords are delayed in their search for a new tenant. These matching delays induce a positive natural vacancy rate that cannot be reduced to zero, even in competitive markets. Price-taking landlords are, however, able to affect the resulting vacancy duration through advertising in a Cournot-Nash equilibrium and will, in general, invest in inefficient levels of advertising. As a consequence, there may be a role for public policy to provide incentives that would induce noncooperative landlords to choose the vacancy cost-minimizing advertising solution. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

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