| dc.description.abstract | Real estate investments and prices are good measures for reflecting expected real estate
demand, and serve as good predictors of economic growth (Knight Frank, 2011). The
"real estate" market and industry will be considered here to include both land and
improvements, their selling and rental prices, the economic rent of land and returns on
buildings and other improvements, and the construction industry.
Economic growth leads to an increase in the middle class of a society. Hoskins, Higgins
and Cardew (2004) find that GDP growth, inflation, and unemployment show significant
correlations with composite property returns Given the importance of the real estate
sector, it is important and paramount to interrogate the relationship between the sector
and economic growth. There are two ways to measure real estate demand and these
involve an evaluation of real estate investments and real estate prices.
As demand for real estate increases, real estate prices rise and therefore real estate
investors will increase their in real estate to meet the demand and therefore it can be said
that real estate prices and real estate investments are directly proportional to real estate
demandRecently, economists propose a collateral effect of house prices that, increase in
real estate prices help relax home owners borrowing constraints and increase their actual
consumption since housing wealth is easy to collateralize
Tracking the Hass Housing Price Index and Kenya‟s GDP numbers over a period of five
years , data was retrieved from different sources but aligned in equal time and periods ,
reviewed and subjected to regression analysis and tested for significance. The results
indicate that there is a relationship between the variables revealing that a quarterly
change in housing prices yields a quarterly change in GDP. The data collected and
analysed indicates that property is a strong asset class which has been under exploited in
portfolios. More consideration should be made by institutional investors. Real estate
prices have been stable during recession and political instability. | en |
