Real Estate Transaction Taxes and Credit Supply
Michael Koetter, Philipp Marek, Antonios Mavropoulos
Journal of Financial Stability,
September
2025
Abstract
We exploit staggered real estate transaction tax (RETT) hikes across German states to identify the effect of house price changes on mortgage credit supply. Based on approximately 33 million real estate online listings, we construct a quarterly hedonic house price index (HPI) between 2008:q1 and 2017:q4, which we instrument with state-specific RETT changes to isolate the effect on mortgage credit supply by all local German banks. First, a RETT hike by one percentage point reduces HPI by 1.2%. This effect is driven by listings in rural regions. Second, a 1% contraction of HPI induced by an increase in the RETT leads to a 1.4% decline in mortgage lending. This transmission of fiscal policy to mortgage credit supply is effective across almost the entire bank capitalization distribution.
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European Real Estate Index (EREI) 2025
Michael Koetter, Felix Noth, Fabian Woebbeking
IWH Technical Reports,
No. 1,
2025
Abstract
This Technical Report documents the construction and coverage of the IWH European Real Estate Index (EREI). Since 2018, we have used machine-learning methods to collect monthly listings of residential real estate available for sale or rent in up to 20 European countries. The Technical Report documents the cleaning and selection process and describes the data regarding coverage, moments, and frequencies to construct the EREI.
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Macroeconomic Reports
Macroeconomic Reports Local and global: IWH regularly provides current economic data – be it about the state of the East German economy, the macroeconomic development in Germany…
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Media Response Archive 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 December 2021 IWH: Ausblick auf Wirtschaftsjahr 2022 in Sachsen mit Bezug auf IWH-Prognose zu Ostdeutschland: "Warum Sachsens…
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Management Board and Supervisory Board As an association established and registered under German civil law the IWH is composed of different internal bodies through which it is led…
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Research Articles
Research Articles Explore cutting-edge research based on CompNet’s micro-aggregated firm-level data and related analytical tools. These articles cover empirical and theoretical…
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Job Market Candidates
Job Market Candidates Marius Fourné Marius Fourné is a PhD candidate in Economics at the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) and Martin Luther University of…
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Three Research Clusters Each IWH research group is assigned to a topic-oriented research cluster. The clusters are not separate organisational units, but rather bundle the…
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Teaching Within the framework of its cooperations with both German and foreign universities IWH researchers are actively committed to teaching by offering academic courses. These…
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Past Events 14. CompNet Annual Conference (Vilnius, 25-26 September 2025) The 14th CompNet Annual Conference, co-hosted with the Bank of Lithuania, took place on 25–26 September…
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