The rise in house prices in Dublin: bubble, fad or just fundamentals

Abstract The recent dramatic rise in house prices in Dublin has been regularly discussed in the media. An obvious question is whether the seemingly ever-increasing house prices are driven by market fundamentals or by speculation? While the observed increase in house prices is due to excess demand for housing, it is the nature of this excess demand that we investigate in this paper. We decompose house prices in Dublin into fundamental and non-fundamental components using a variety of measures. A regime-switching model is estimated and tested to explore whether speculative bubbles, fads or just fundamentals drive house prices in Dublin. Our main findings suggest that there may be a speculative bubble in the Dublin house prices.