Methods and Applications of Analysis

Volume 24 (2017)

Number 1

Special issue dedicated to Henry B. Laufer on the occasion of his 70th birthday: Part 1

Guest Editors: Stephen S.-T. Yau (Tsinghua University, China); Gert-Martin Greuel (University of Kaiserslautern, Germany); Jonathan Wahl (University of North Carolina, USA); Rong Du (East China Normal University, China); Yun Gao (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China); and Huaiqing Zuo (Tsinghua University, China)

Seasonality in United States home prices

Pages: 1 – 9

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4310/MAA.2017.v24.n1.a1

Author

Henry Laufer (Renaissance Technologies)

Abstract

We present the slides from a talk about Wall Street and about seasonality in United States home prices. Seasonality is approached via two non-standard paths: for prices we use initial listed prices, for seasonality we use easy Fourier analysis. Prices peak at the end of May. The amplitude of the seasonal change is large in recent years: 5.3%. There is a similar seasonality in the areas of listed homes. But the amplitude of the area change is much smaller: 1.9%. The price seasonality is uniform throughout most of the United States.

Full Text (PDF format)

Henry Laufer was the Chief Scientist at Renaissance Techologies. He is now retired.

The author is deeply grateful to Gert-Martin Greuel for transcribing the author’s poorly organized slides into the first draft of this article.

Received 16 March 2016

Published 18 August 2017