The efficiency of housing market in Turkey

This study investigates the efficiency of housing market and the validity of the ripple effect in Turkey. In order to do this, we examined the housing price dynamics of Turkey with various unit root tests in all 81 cities of Turkey by dividing them into geographical groups apart from İstanbul, Ankara, and İzmir according to the original grouping of Central Bank of Turkey where we acquired our data from. Along with a conventional unit root test which assumes structural stability and linear adjustment, a nonlinear unit root test and also a nonlinear unit root test with structural breaks were applied. Our tests proved evidently that the majority of housing markets in Turkey is inefficient even though the test results were mixed, and also the ripple effect does exists indeed. In the light of this information, the housing market in Turkey calls for urgent investigation towards the inefficient markets and ripple effect originating points. Keywords: Housing market efficiency, Ripple effect, Linear unit root test, Nonlinear unit root tests, Nonlinear unit root test with structural breaks.