Home purchase restriction and housing price: A distribution dynamics analysis

China's residential housing market has been largely influenced by the policy initiatives of the central government. This study examines how the implementation and removal of home purchase restrictions has affected housing price changes in major cities. Based on the dataset of 70 large- and medium- sized cities between 2014 and 2015, the price evolution trends were evaluated by the distribution dynamic analysis based on the method of Mobility Probability Plot (MPP). This newly developed method allows for better exploring housing price dynamics under home purchase restriction policy. There are four major findings: First, home purchase restriction has a salient effect on curbing speculative investment demand in terms of lowering large sized housing price growth; second, home purchase restriction has long-running effects on bringing down housing prices if the current price increase does not exceed 5% on a month-to-month basis; third, small- or large-sized housing may face more downward pressure of housing prices than medium-sized housing under the home purchase restriction; fourth, removal of the home purchase restriction may saliently increase the housing price levels that have been contained.