Segmented Housing Search (under revision for the American Economic Review.)
Monika Piazzesi Stanford & NBER
Martin Schneider Stanford & NBER
Johannes Stroebel New York University
December 2014
Abstract
This paper studies housing markets with multiple segments searched by heterogeneous clienteles. We document market and search activity for the San Francisco Bay Area. Variation within narrow geographic areas is large and diers signicantly from variation across those areas. In particular, search activity and inventory covary positively within cities and zip codes, but negatively across those units. A quantitative search model shows how the interaction of broad and narrow searchers drives housing market activity at dierent levels of aggregation and shapes the response to shocks as well as price discounts due to market frictions.