The relationship between macroeconomic activity and residential expenditure over 1976:1 to 2001:1 has been examined in Japan. The analysis is conducted using variance decompositions (VDCs) and historical decompositions (HDs). The VDCs indicate that shocks to money stock, output and interest rates have significant impact on residential expenditure. The paper also compares the relative importance of various macroeconomic variables in determining residential investment using HDs of variance of residuals for the residential investment for three periods (pre bubble period, bubble period and post bubble period).