The relationship between residential development land prices and house prices

Abstract

There exists apparent disagreement between two areas of literature regarding the relationship between house prices and land prices. In the professional literature it is argued that high house prices cause high residential development land prices. In some of the policy literature it is argued that it is land-price increases that are behind increasing house prices. We argue that this is a rather artificial dichotomy and arises from two different ways of thinking about the relationship between land and house prices. To demonstrate this we explore how housing and residential land markets work and how their price responses are interrelated.