"Shared Values": Housing Affordability in Israel and the U.S.

A talk by Y&S Nazarian Center Postdoctoral Fellow Roni Golan on shared trends in the US and Israel's housing markets in recent years, the impacts of increasing costs on various social groups and new techniques for measuring housing affordability more accurately.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017
11:30 AM - 12:30 PM
UCLA Anderson A201

Note: RSVP is required as space is limited. Lunch will be provided.

Co-sponsored by the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies and the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate's Gilbert Program in Real Estate, Finance and Urban Economics

About the Talk

In the wake of the global financial crisis, and the related historically-low interest rates, the Israeli housing market moved from a long period of malaise to a period of boom. During the last ten years, home values in Israel rose by over 120% while income only increased by about 45%. Housing became less affordable. Although concern about housing affordability has long been on the agendas of governments and policymakers around the world, in Israel it became particularly acute following the social protests that flooded the streets of Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011. The protests demanded that the Israeli government make available a supply of housing at affordable prices.

Unlike Israel, the American housing market experienced a boom prior to 2007 and a bust following the crisis. Nevertheless, since 2011 the U.S. shares the upward trend of home values with Israel. Consequentially, the attention on housing affordability is growing, especially in coastal cities such as Los Angeles.

My research at UCLA focuses on housing affordability in these two countries. In this presentation we will explore housing affordability issues in major cities in the U.S. and in Israel. We will confront questions such as: how housing affordability should be measured; how current housing affordability compares to prior time periods; which social groups struggle the most with increasing home values; and discuss the similarities of these two countries from the housing affordability point of view.

About the Speaker

Roni Golan, Postdoctoral Fellow for the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies and the Ziman Center's UCLA Gilbert Program in Real Estate, Finance and Urban Economics, is a researcher in the field of real estate economics. His research primarily focuses on seller and buyer decision-making and price behavior in the housing market. His Ph.D. thesis specifically concentrated on consequences of imperfection in the Israeli housing market. In this context, Golan studied the price effect of the currency substitution experienced by the Israeli real estate market in the past decade and the efficiency and equity effects of improved price information shock that recently occurred in the Israeli housing market.

Golan earned his B.Sc. degree in Structural Engineering (cum laude), as well as M.Sc. (cum laude) and Ph.D. degrees in Urban Planning from the Technion - Israel institute of Technology. His current work includes studies of the bi-causal correlation between housing prices and crime and the relationship between housing affordability and migration.

Sponsor(s): Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate's Gilbert Program in Real Estate, Finance and Urban Economics