Evaluating heterogeneous effects of housing-sector-specific macroprudential policy tools on Belgian house price growth

This paper analyzes whether housing-related macroprudential policy has heterogeneous effects on house price growth in local housing markets. More specifically, we employ an extensive dataset of Belgian municipalities containing a multitude of drivers of local house price dynamics and examine the potential heterogeneity of housing-related macroprudential policy changes driven by local characteristics related to financial constrained and high-risk borrowers, the degree of local housing market activity, and changes in local household indebtedness. We find more dampening effects of the common macroprudential policy tightenings on local house price growth for municipalities characterized by low-income and young citizens, which furthermore increase in hot housing markets. Our findings shed more light on the geographical heterogeneity of national macroprudential policy changes, which indicate the possibility to stabilize local housing market booms.