Is there a bubbly euphoria in the Turkish housing market?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether there is a bubble in the Turkish housing market during the period of 2006–2018. In conjunction with the irrational bubble theory, this study applies the Pitros and Arayici (Int J Hous Mark Anal 9(2):190-221, 2016. 10.1108/IJHMA-01-2015-0002) bubble algorithmic model. The empirical results reveal that the Turkish housing market was in a bubble during 2013–2017 period, the peak/last year of the bubble is the year 2017 and that the bubble-bust occurred in 2018. The foremost contribution of this study is that it is the first to document a historical housing bubble episode for Turkey using the premises of irrational bubble theory and the first to apply an algorithmic approach to assess the bubble risk for the period of 2006 and 2018. As to the implications, this documented model may be used as a tool to enhance policymakers' knowledge toward the early identification of housing bubbles.