House prices: local booms and busts

The most recent American Economic Review has a set of interesting papers on 'Very Local House Price Dynamics'. It's surprising how little we know about what happens within cities as house prices boom and bust. As usual, one of the biggest barriers is absence of data. Now, new detailed data sets are allowing researchers to make progress in considering these issues. It's also possible that the fairly long duration of the boom had simply pushed this issue lower down people's radar in terms of an interesting research question.