Spotting excessive regional house price growth and what to do about it

Rapidly rising house prices are a well-known source of financial instability. This Policy Contribution examines whether there are regional differences

Publishing date: 18 October 2017
Authors: Grégory Claeys Dirk Schoenmaker Konstantinos Efstathiou

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Housing bubbles are a well-known source of financial instability. In addition, given the importance of this sector to the economy, the collapse of such bubbles tends to be followed by deeper recessions and slower recoveries than other crises, as the recent boom-bust housing cycles in many countries have clearly demonstrated.

In the European Union, the policy instruments available to address this and to prevent future housing bubbles are implemented either at the national level (macroprudential policies) or at the euro-area level (monetary policy). However, recent research suggests that house price developments and bubbles are above all a local phenomenon.

There are significant regional differences in house price developments within EU countries, in particular between capital cities and other regions. Our results suggest that house price fluctuations in capital cities tend to be more volatile and stronger than in the rest of the countries, warranting more targeted measures at the local level.

The authors propose to use differentiated macroprudential policy at the regional level. This could be done with the application of different loan-to-value (LTV) or debt-to-income (DTI) limits for mortgages in capital cities and in the rest of the countries, in order to tighten policy more quickly in areas more prone to overheating. This type of policy has already been successfully applied in Korea. Competent authorities in the EU should consider adding this instrument to their toolkits in order to increase the precision, and therefore the effectiveness, of their policies.

About the authors

Grégory Claeys

Grégory Claeys, a French and Spanish citizen, joined Bruegel as a research fellow in February 2014, before being appointed senior fellow in April 2020.

Grégory Claeys is currently on leave for public service, serving as Director of the Economics Department of France Stratégie, the think tank and policy planning institution of the French government, since November 2023.

Grégory’s research interests include international macroeconomics and finance, central banking and European governance. From 2006 to 2009 Grégory worked as a macroeconomist in the Economic Research Department of the French bank Crédit Agricole. Prior to joining Bruegel he also conducted research in several capacities, including as a visiting researcher in the Financial Research Department of the Central Bank of Chile in Santiago, and in the Economic Department of the French Embassy in Chicago. Grégory is also an Associate Professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris where he is teaching macroeconomics in the Master of Finance. He previously taught undergraduate macroeconomics at Sciences Po in Paris.

He holds a PhD in Economics from the European University Institute (Florence), an MSc in economics from Paris X University and an MSc in management from HEC (Paris).

Grégory is fluent in English, French and Spanish.
Dirk Schoenmaker

Dirk Schoenmaker is a Non-Resident Fellow at Bruegel. He is also a Professor of Banking and Finance at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam and a Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Research (CEPR). He has published in the areas of sustainable finance, central banking, financial supervision and stability and European financial integration.

Dirk is author of ‘Governance of International Banking: The Financial Trilemma’ (Oxford University Press) and co-author of the textbooks ‘Financial Markets and Institutions: A European perspective’ (Cambridge University Press) and ‘Principles of Sustainable Finance’ (Oxford University Press). He earned his PhD in economics at the London School of Economics.

Before joining RSM, Dirk was Dean of the Duisenberg school of finance from 2009 to 2015. From 1998 to 2008, he served at the Netherlands Ministry of Finance. In the 1990s, he served at the Bank of England. He is a regular consultant for the IMF, the OECD and the European Commission.
Konstantinos Efstathiou

Konstantinos, a Greek citizen, works in Bruegel as an Affiliate Fellow in the Macroeconomics and Governance area. Before joining Bruegel, Konstantinos was at the European Commission, as a Blue Book Trainee in the Cabinet of President Juncker. He also interned at the Central Bank of Luxembourg (BCL) as a research assistant, involved in projects related to the Wage Dynamics Network (WDN) research group.

He holds a Master in International Economics and International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where he specialized in Quantitative Methods and European Studies.

Konstantinos’ research interests include macroeconomics, European economic governance and international economics.

Konstantinos is a native speaker of Greek, speaks fluent English and has good knowledge of French.

Declaration of interests 2017

Declaration of interests 2018