Interest Rates and the Spatial Polarization of Housing Markets

Rising within-country differences in house values are a much-debated trend in the United States and internationally. Using new long-run regional data for 15 advanced economies, we show that standard explanations linking growing price dispersion to rent dispersion are contradicted by an important stylized fact: rent dispersion has increased far less than price dispersion. We propose a new explanation: a uniform decline in real risk-free interest rates can have heterogeneous spatial effects on house values. Falling real safe rates disproportionately push up prices in large agglomerations where initial rent-price ratios are low, leading to housing market polarization on the national level. (JEL E43, R21, R31)