Owners' estimates of the value of their home arewidely used in research and form the basis ofmuch of our understanding of householdwealth. But are these estimates accurate? Usinghedonic methods and data from the Household,Income, and Labour Dynamics in AustraliaSurvey, I investigate this for Australian home‐owners. The findings indicate that owners over‐estimate their home's value by around 2.5 percent or $100 billion economy‐wide. Important-ly, the extent of mis‐estimation depends upon theage of the home‐owner and the size of the home.Thus, some caution needs to be exercised whencomparing reported housing wealth acrossgroups, as part of these differences may reflectdifferential estimation errors.
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