Housing Market Fluctuations

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainable development is inconceivable without a healthy housing market. Housing is one of the most basic human needs, a key component in the sustainable development of a community and one of the most important public priorities affecting urban development. From an economic perspective, houses are among the major investments that people make in their lifetimes.

Between the mid-1980s and today, real house prices more or less doubled in most industrialized countries. Even before the recent crisis, this was not a smooth process of continuous growth. All countries experienced cycles where booms with price increases above trend were followed by busts with stagnating or falling prices. Housing price trends varied widely from one geographic region to another.

Housing market in general is characterized by frequent disruptions, information asymmetries, high transaction costs, long investment paybacks and volatility. However, if housing markets adjust slowly to changing demographic and macroeconomic conditions, then periods of disequilibrium are inevitable. Therefore, knowledge of the reasons of market fluctuations could contribute to general understanding of housing markets and how they operate. Investments in real estate can make significant profit for investors and banks, however, due to a complexity of projects and specific nature of real estate cycles, also can lead to extensive losses and evoke financial and economic crises.

Construction and real estate market downturn, as evidenced by history and experience of the world, is inevitable. Recent economic crisis in construction and real estate sector has set new goals and objectives for market players. There is a need to perform detailed analysis of the situation and look for strategies to make this sector function effectively. There are many crisis management strategies developed in the word, however, successful construction and real estate management strategy must be aligned with economic, social, political, legal and other environmental conditions of a country. Analysis of housing market fluctuations and the affecting factors helps to better understand the processes and key determinants and therefore to predict future market trends, as well as implement preventive measures for crisis management.

This Special Issue will collect papers whose aim is to contribute to international housing market analysis, measurement and forecasting of market fluctuations, as well as crisis management issues.

Authors from different fields, such as real estate, economics, management, engineering, psychology, social sciences, political sciences, etc. are invited to submit their studies. All the theoretical, methodological and practical studies are accepted in this issue.

Dr. Laura Tupėnaitė
Guest Editor

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Peculiarities of the housing market
• Housing market sustainability
• Housing supply and demand
• Housing market cycle, booms and boosts
• Theories on housing market fluctuations
• Reasons of housing market fluctuations
• Determinants of housing market fluctuations
• Forecasting of housing market fluctuations
• Crisis management in housing market
• Political regulations of the housing stock
• International case studies on housing market fluctuations.