Rents are both a very important cost variable in the housing market, having large welfare and distributional implication, and one of the most important variables in house price research. The aim of this paper is to construct rent indices for Norway's capital, Oslo.
This paper uses a unique dataset with 24,257 housing for rent advertisements, creating hedonic indices using the time dummy variable method.
In this paper, the author presents annual rent indices for Norway's capital, Oslo, over the period from 1970 to 2008. In addition to an aggregate index, they construct hedonic rent indices for different flat types.
Existing Norwegian rent indices start around 2000 or are constructed with the purpose of being a part of the CPI, and are therefore adjusted for change in quality. Since the author's indices are not adjusted for quality, they give new information about Norwegian rent for the past 40 years.
