Comparisons of the relations between housing prices and the macroeconomy in China’s first-, second- and third-tier cities

•A new perspective to explore the relations between housing prices and the macro economy in China is provided.•The housing market in first-, second- and third-tier cities varies greatly from the other based on empirical studies.•Innovative and targeted suggestions are offered for the regulation of different housing markets.

Based on a VAR (vector auto-regression) model, we conduct an empirical study on the relations between housing prices and the macroeconomy from the perspective of China’s first-, second- and third-tier cities. The results show that the interest rate has significant negative impact on housing prices, but the impact gradually decreases from first-tier to third-tier cities; the effect of inflation on housing prices is positive in the initial period and then becomes negative, and compared with that in second- and third-tier cities, the negative effect in first-tier cities is much more significant; housing prices have a positive effect on inflation, and the effect gradually increases from first-tier to third-tier cities; the influence of the macroeconomic growth rate on housing prices is generally positive in all the cities, and the strongest effect is found for first-tier cities. Based on the findings, our work can provide the government with more targeted policy recommendations, which can offer some new ideas on the regulation of the real estate market.