This paper sets out an econometric model of the Irish building society
mortgage market. It arises out of work being carried out on the housing
market in Ireland. There have been a number of international studies which
have tried to model housing and mortgage markets (see Muth, 1960;
Whitehead, 1974; Hadjimatheou, 1976; Artis, Kiernan and Whitney, 1975;
Smith, 1969; Arcelus and Metzler, 1973 and Swan, 1973). For Ireland,
Nolan (1979) attempted to model the housing market while Hewitt and
Thom (1979) estimated a quarterly model of Irish building society behaviour
over the period 1970-77
