Building Approvals as a Leading Indicator of Property Sector Investment

Authors

  • Harry M Karamujic The University of Melbourne, Australia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.32890/ijbf2012.9.2.3

Keywords:

Property investment, Structural time series modelling, Building approvals for new houses, Summer holiday seasonal effect, End of financial year seasonal effect

Abstract

Overall, building approvals for new houses (BANHs) are viewed by most economic analysts/commentators as a leading indicator of property investment due to the importance of this sector to the whole economy and employment. This study seeks shed some additional light on modelling this seasonal behaviour of BANHs by: (i) establishing the presence of seasonality in Victorian BANHs; (ii) ascertaining it as to whether is deterministic or stochastic; (iii) estimating out-of-sample forecasting capabilities of the modelling specification; and (iv) speculating on possible interpretation of results. The study utilises a structural time series model of Harvey. Factors corresponding to June, April, December and November are found to be significant at five per cent level. The observed seasonality could be attributed to both the summer holidays and the end of financial year seasonal effects. Irrespective of partially incomplete nature of this research, the findings should be appealing to, among others, researchers, all levels of Government, construction industry and banking industry.

 

References

ABS (2009) http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/exnote/8731.0, September 2011.

ABS (2010) 6416.0 - House Price Indexes: Eight Capital Cities, Dec 2010, http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6416.0, viewed March 2011.

ABS (2011) 1350.0 - Australian Economic Indicators, Apr 2011, http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6416.0, viewed March 2011.

ABS (2011) 5206.0 Australian National Accounts: National Income, Expenditure and Product, March 2011, http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/meisubs.nsf /0/6E76C70F27B705BBCA2578A10012B52B/$File/5206001_key_aggregates.xls, viewed May 2011.

Australian School of Business (2009) Rapid response to GFC saved Australia’s economy – Meet the CEO with Ken Henry,9http://www.asb.unsw.edu.au/newsevents/ mediaroom/media/2009/november/Pages/kenhenrymeettheceo.aspx, May 2011.

Ball, M. and Wood, A. (1999) Housing Investment: Long Run International Trends and Volatility, Housing Studies, 14(2), 185–209.

Bankersalmanac.com (2011) Top Banks in the World by Bankersalmanac.com, http://www.bankersalmanac.com/addcon/infobank/bank-rankings.aspx May 2011.

Burns, A. and Mitchell, W. (1946) Measuring Business Cycles, New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, Studies in Business Cycles, 2.

Costello, G.J. (2001) Further Evidence of Seasonal Influences in Australian Housing Markets - A Case Study of Perth, proceedings of 2001 PRRES Conference, Adelaide, South Australia, January.

Colwell, P. and Park, H. (1990) Seasonality and Size Effects - The Case of Real-Estate-Related Investment, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 3, 251–259.

De Jong, P. (1991) The Diffuse Kalman Filter, The Annals of Statistics, 19(2), 1073–1083.

Fisher, J. (2006) Why Does Household Investment Lead Business Investment Over the Business Cycle, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, October.

Friday, S. H. and Peterson, R.D. (1997) January Return Seasonality in Real Estate Investment Trusts: Information vs. Tax-loss Selling Effects, The Journal of Financial Research, 20(1), 33–51.

Harris, J. (1989) The Effect of Real Rates of Interest on Housing Prices, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 2, 47-60.

Harrison P.J. and Stevens C.F (1976) Bayesian Forecasting, Journal of Royal Statistical Society, 205–247.

Harvey, A. C. (1989) Forecasting, Structural Time Series Models and the Kalman Filter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Harvey, A.C., Koopman, S.J. and Riani, M., (1997) The Modeling and Seasonal Adjustment of Weekly Observations, JBES, 15, 354-68.

Hilmer, S.C. & Tiao, G.S. (1982) An ARIMA-Model-Based Approach to Seasonal Adjustment, Journal of American Statistical Association, 77, 63–70.

Karamujic, M. H. (2009) The Determination of Home Loan Interest Rates and an Empirical Assessment of their Cyclicality and Seasonality in Australia, Saarbrucken Germany: VDM.

Kitagawa, G. and Gercsh, W. (1984) A Smoothness Priors-State Space Modeling of Time Series with Trend ad Seasonality, Journal of the American Statistical Society, 79.

Lenten, L.J.A. and Moosa, I.A. (1999) Modelling the Trend and Seasonality in the Consumption of Alcoholic Beverages in the United Kingdom, Applied Economics, 31, 795–804.

Ma, C. K. and Goebel, P.R. (1991) On the Seasonalities of Mortgage-Backed Security Prices, Journal of Real Estate Research, 6, 19–38.

Rossini, P. (2000) Estimating the Seasonal Effects of Residential Property Markets – A Case Study of Adelaide, proceedings of 2000 PRRES Conference, Sydney, Australia, January.

ABS (2006) Census of Population and Housing. Retrieved from http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/ABSNavigation/prenav/LocationSearch?ReadF orm&prenavtabname=Location%20Search&&&navmapdisplayed=true&textvers ion=false&collection=Census&period=2006&producttype=&method=&productl abel=&breadcrumb=L&topic=&, viewed September 2011.

Australian Taxation Office (1997) Income Tax Assessment Act (1997) http://law.ato.gov.au/atolaw/execute_search_java.htm, viewed September 2011.

Downloads

Published

12-06-2012

How to Cite

Karamujic, H. M. (2012). Building Approvals as a Leading Indicator of Property Sector Investment. International Journal of Banking and Finance, 9(2), 44-58. https://doi.org/10.32890/ijbf2012.9.2.3

Research impact

Harvested 2026-09-07
3 citations, from OpenAlex — the highest of the sources checked

Counts differ between services because each indexes a different body of literature. None of them is the whole picture.

Identifiers DOI 10.32890/ijbf2012.9.2.3 OpenAlex W2144209418