The Estimation of Owner Occupied Housing Indexes using the RPPI:The Case of Tokyo

Dramatic increases and decreases in housing prices have had an enormous impact on the economies of various countries. If this kind of fluctuation in housing prices is linked to fluctuations in the consumer price index (CPI) and GDP, it may be reflected in fiscal and monetary policies. However, during the 1980s housing bubble in Japan and the later U.S. housing bubble, fluctuations in asset prices were not sufficiently reflected in price statistics and the like. The estimation of imputed rent for owneroccupied housing is said to be one of the most important factors for this. Using multiple previously proposed methods, this study estimated the imputed rent for owner-occupied housing in Tokyo and clarified the extent to which the estimated imputed rent diverged depending on the estimation method. Examining the results obtained showed that, during the bubble’s peak, there was an 11-fold discrepancy between the Equivalent Rent Approach currently employed in Japan and Equivalent Rent calculated with a hedonic approach using market rent. Meanwhile, with the User Cost Approach, during the bubble period when asset prices rose significantly, the values became negative with some estimation methods. Accordingly, we estimated Diewert’s OOH Index, which was proposed by Diewert and Nakamura (2009). When the Diewert’s OOH Index results estimated here were compared to Equivalent Rent Approach estimation results modified with the hedonic approach using market rent, it revealed that from 1990 to 2009, the Diewert’s OOH Index results were on average 1.7 times greater than the Equivalent Rent Approach results, with a maximum 3-fold difference. These findings suggest that even when the Equivalent Rent Approach is improved, significant discrepancies remain

Commercial Property Price Indexes for Tokyo-Transaction-Based Index, Appraisal-Based Index and Present Value Index-

While fluctuations in commercial property prices have an enormous impact on economic systems, the development of related statistics that can capture these fluctuations is one of the areas that is lagging the furthest behind. The reasons for this are that, in comparison to housing, commercial property has a high level of heterogeneity and there are extremely significant data limitations. Focusing on the Tokyo office market, this study estimated commercial property price indexes using the data available in the property market, and clarified discrepancies in commercial property price indexes based on differences in the method used to create them. Specifically, we estimated a quality-adjusted price index with the hedonic price method using property appraisal prices and transaction prices available for the J-REIT market. In addition, we attempted to estimate a price index based on a present value model using revenues arising from property and discount rates. Here, along with the discount rates underlying the determination of property appraisal prices and transaction prices, we obtained discount rates using enterprise values that can be acquired from the J-REIT investment market, and estimated the respective risk premiums. First, the findings showed that, compared to risk premiums formed by the stock market, risk premiums when determining property appraisal prices change only relatively gradually, with the adjustment speed being especially slow while the market is contracting. As a result, these prices decline only slowly. They also showed that until the Lehman Shock, property market risk premiums formed by the stock market were at a lower level than risk premiums set when determining property appraisal prices and transaction prices, but following the Lehman Shock, the respective risk premiums converged toward the same level