Century of research on property cycles: a literature review

Abstract

The existence of cycles in building and property, has grown to have significant importance in the uK and internationally; whereas property markets have been characterised by boom and bust cycles with a negative impact on the national economies. as a result, property cycles became a popular research topic amongst property professionals and scholars, with a greater understanding of the cyclical behaviour of the property market being seen as a major guide to the financial success (failure) of property investments. consequently, considerable literature has accumulated over the years on the subject. this paper provides a review of this literature, mostly written in the uK and uS, with international insights on the subject. this paper reviews research on the subject chronologically over a one hundred-year period. the study is designed to provide readers with a historical overview of Property cycles research by emphasising the underlying theme which dominated a particular period of this research, as well as indicating methods, data analysis techniques employed and outcomes of these studies. Its ai is to put more clarity on the subject, as well as help to navigate anyone interested in Property cycles through a considerable amount of research which has accumulated over the last century.

Land Redevelopment and the Built Environment in Third-Wave Cities: Review and Synthesis

“…Beauregard (1994), basing his analysis on comparisons of trends in US real estate markets with the performance of the rest of the economy over the 1970s and 1980s, finds little or no evidence in favor of the hypothesis; Christophers (2011), who examines British data on the changing share of real-estate investments in pension funds from 2000 to 2007, claims to have discovered positive (but indirect) evidence in its favor. As it happens, a counterargument to Harvey's hypothesis can be constructed on the basis of the literature in general which reveals the existence of a strong if irregular positive relationship between real-estate cycles and the economic cycle as a whole (See also Barras and Ferguson, 1985;Jadevicius et al, 2017;Leamer, 2015). The evident deduction that can be drawn from this information is that the inter-sectoral rebalancing of profit rates will in all likelihood have occurred long before the appearance of any over accumulation crisis in sectors other than property development.…”

Land Redevelopment and the Built Environment in Third-Wave Cities: Review and Synthesis

“…Beauregard (1994), basing his analysis on comparisons of trends in US real estate markets with the performance of the rest of the economy over the 1970s and 1980s, finds little or no evidence in favor of the hypothesis; Christophers (2011), who examines British data on the changing share of real-estate investments in pension funds from 2000 to 2007, claims to have discovered positive (but indirect) evidence in its favor. As it happens, a counterargument to Harvey's hypothesis can be constructed on the basis of the literature in general which reveals the existence of a strong if irregular positive relationship between real-estate cycles and the economic cycle as a whole (See also Barras and Ferguson, 1985;Jadevicius et al, 2017;Leamer, 2015). The evident deduction that can be drawn from this information is that the inter-sectoral rebalancing of profit rates will in all likelihood have occurred long before the appearance of any over accumulation crisis in sectors other than property development.…”

After the crisis is before the crisis: Reading property market shifts through Amsterdam’s changing landscape of property investors

“…Alternatively, market shifts are explained on the basis of trends and emerging asset classes such as real estate investment trusts (REITs), hedge funds, derivatives, and other calculative market devices (Fields, 2018; García-Lamarca, 2020; Lagna, 2016; Mills et al, 2019; van Loon and Aalbers, 2017). Market volatility and institutional disruptions like financial crises tend to be attributed to the intrinsic cyclical nature of property markets (Ankenbrand et al, 2020; Fields, 2017; Jadevicius et al, 2017), and the failure of governments to fix them through institutional adjustments (Furton and Martin, 2019; Hassel et al, 2019; Tarullo, 2019).…”