Speculation and Real Estate: Can Speculation Contribute to an Efficient Real Estate Market?

In financial markets, speculation is justified by its contribution to liquidity, hedging, and, if rationally done, adjusting price to value. Derivatives are essential for turning speculation into an element that contributes to an efficient market. Property assets have the distinctive feature of being both residential and productive assets and investment assets. This paper studies how speculation may contribute positively to the real estate market and does so by looking at it from the triple perspective of property, primitive financial assets, and derivatives. To answer this, the authors try to identify which assets are needed to achieve this end and how they can help to guide speculation towards efficiency. On this basis, we examine the development of derivatives on real estate indexes and the perspectives of their future evolution, including their impact on the real market.