For home buyers, who constitute about two-thirds of U.S. households, the choice about how much housing and which house to buy is a joint consumption/investment decision. Does this consumption/investment link negate the risk/return tradeoff within the single-family hosuing market? Theory suggests the link still holds. This paper supplies empirical evidence in support of that theoretical result.
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Risk and Return in the Single-Family Housing Market
September 1996
WP 96-16 – The tradeoff between risk and return in equity markets is well established. This paper examines the existence of the same tradeoff in the single-family housing market.