What contributes to the rising house prices in Beijing? A decomposition approach

The average real house price in Beijing rose by roughly 41.8% between 2012 and 2015, and the appreciation differs across low- versus high-priced homes. The rising house price might be caused by changes in the characteristics of housing units, and it might also be induced by the changing returns to housing characteristics in the underlying hedonic price functions. In this paper, we use a comprehensive housing transaction dataset and analyze the changes in the distribution of house prices over time through a decomposition approach. The result of Oaxaca-Blinder mean decomposition suggests that the proportion of the price gap between 2012 and 2015 due to altered returns over time is greater than the proportion caused by changes in housing characteristics. The quantile decomposition shows that the decomposition effects are heterogenous across the complete distribution of house prices. We also find that low-priced homeowners are exposed to a decline in house prices, while there are deteriorating housing conditions from 2012 to 2015. The high-priced homeowners experience an improvement in living conditions, but a rise in house prices.