Abstract

Land is a major and rising component of the cost of new housing, yet land prices are rarely directly observed in Norway. Following the methodology of Davis and Heathcote (2007), we construct a quarterly land price series for residential housing in Oslo over the period 2003 – 2025. The land price is the difference between the price of a used home and the replacement cost of the structure. We find that real land prices rose to about three and a half times their 2003 level and the implied land share of new housing costs rose from about a third to just over half. Land prices are also more volatile than construction costs and account for much of the cyclical variation in house prices.