Latent class path model of intention to move house

This paper proposes a latent class path model to analyse the intention to move house as a function of residential satisfaction, which in turn is influenced by the gap between residential aspirations and reality. Different from the existing literature, which assumes the same structural dependencies apply to all residents with different socio-demographic profiles, we allow for different unobserved classes with different structural dependencies. Class membership is a function of the socio-demographics of individuals. Using data from eight renovated historical blocks in two Chinese cities, the differences influencing the intention to move house between two latent classes are captured. In one class the intention to move is significantly influenced by housing and environmental satisfaction, but this dependency is not found in the other class. The impact of the residential gap on satisfaction also differs between the two classes. Class membership is found to be mainly attributed to having property rights or not and whether respondents are supporting the elderly. Policy and planning implications are provided considering the different residential interests and backgrounds of residents.     

The effect of widowhood on housing and location choices

The number of elderly persons living alone is increasing and their influence on the housing market is getting larger. This paper investigates the effect of the loss of a spouse on housing and location choices. A partner’s death induces a decrease in income which may lead to downsizing. Widowhood may also reveal new preferences, such as the need to be close to care givers and health services. We estimate the effect of a transition to widowhood on housing consumption and location choices using the French Housing Surveys. Widowhood significantly increases residential mobility, especially at older ages and for those who have children. Mobile widows tend to live closer to their relatives but do not move to co-reside with a child. Housing and location adjustments are consistent with new widows moving to dwellings that are smaller, more often apartments and in the rental sector, and on average located in larger municipalities where services are more accessible. The housing demand of widows will be significant in the next 20 years, especially the demand for small dwellings.     

Does home owning smooth the variability of future housing consumption?

We show that the hedging benefit of owning a home reduces the variability of housing consumption after a move. When a current home owner’s house price covaries positively with housing costs in a future city, changes in the future cost of housing are offset by commensurate changes in wealth before the move. Using Census micro-data, we find that the cross-sectional variation in house values subsequent to a move is lower for home owners who moved between more highly covarying cities. Our preferred estimates imply that an increase in covariance of one standard deviation reduces the variance of subsequent housing consumption by about 11%. Households at the top end of the covariance distribution who are likely to have owned large homes before moving get the largest reductions, of up to 40% relative to households at the median.     

限购政策对城市住房市场的调控效应分析——以天津市为例

为评估限购政策对城市住房市场的调控效应,借助灰色系统理论的灰色关联分析法构建数学模型,以天津市为例,对限购政策实施前后城市住房市场的变动情况进行了比较分析。结果显示,与限购政策实施前相比,天津市的住宅现房销售面积、住宅期房销售面积在时间上均出现了明显的滞后;住宅施工面积在时间上则未明显的变化;住宅投资完成额和住宅新开工面积在时间上则有少许提前。由此可以认为,限购政策的实施引起了住房市场供需双方行动方向的分异,降低了需求者群体的住房需求量,加快了供应者群体的供应速度,增加了市场住房供应量。     

Housing and the Korean economy

This paper explores the nexus between housing and the Korean economy. It starts with an overview of the size, growth, and volatility of residential investment in conjunction with long-term resource allocation and short-term macroeconomic fluctuations. Then, the evolution of housing finance and its implications for recent house price run-up are discussed. The relationships among housing price, consumer spending, and inflation are also investigated. Particular attention is paid to the debate over house price bubbles, housing wealth effects on consumption, and the causality between house price and inflation. The paper concludes with a brief assessment of government intervention to stabilize house prices.     

Job creation and housing construction: Constraints on metropolitan area employment growth

Differences in the supply of housing generate substantial variation in house prices across the United States. Because house prices influence migration, the elasticity of housing supply also has an important impact on local labor markets. I assemble evidence on housing supply regulations and examine their effect on metropolitan area housing and labor market dynamics. Locations with relatively few barriers to construction experience more residential construction and smaller increases in house prices in response to an increase in housing demand. Furthermore, housing supply constraints alter local employment and wage dynamics in locations where the degree of regulation is most severe.     

Residential mobility with job location uncertainty

This paper investigates the relationship between job changes and residential mobility. A job change may be prompted by reasons unrelated to factors associated with housing consumption. However, a job change may lead to an adjustment to housing consumption, i.e., residential relocation. Previous studies find that job relocations are positively associated with residential mobility. This paper departs from previous studies by looking at the effects of an uncertain future job location on residential mobility and mobility expectation. It is conjectured that with the existence of costs of residential mobility, a household head's likelihood for changing jobs in the future dampens the household's propensity to move, but encourages the formation of mobility expectation. These conjectures are examined empirically using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and they are confirmed.     

A MCGP decision aid for homebuyers to make the best choice

This study adopts a new approach, the multi-choice goal programming (MCGP), to evaluate houses in order to help homebuyers to find better house based on the residential preferences. According to the function of MCGP, homebuyers can set multiple housing goals with multiple aspiration levels. This increases the flexibility to find a suitable house. Compared with other classical methods such as checklist and analytic hierarchy process, MCGP is more efficient, especially while considering a lot of housing criteria and house alternatives. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of MCGP decision aid for housing selection, a real case study is then provided. Furthermore, ten volunteers are invited to participate in the empirical experiment. The results also validate the effectiveness and efficiency of MCGP decision aid.     

某居民楼山墙裂缝产生原因分析及处理

针对某居民楼山墙裂缝产生的位置、形状,结合房屋检测及房屋现状,认为该居民楼的倾斜变形及变形缝被填塞共同导致了房屋山墙产生损伤裂缝。为确保房屋安全,建议对部分地基进行灌浆加固,清除变形缝内填塞物,恢复房屋相对变形能力,对开裂墙体采用压力灌浆的方法进行修补加固。     

Housing equity,residential mobility and commuting

Highly productive economies require a flexible labor force with workers that move in accordance with the changing demand for goods and services. In times with falling housing prices, the mobility of home owning workers may be hampered by a lock-in effect of low or even negative housing equity. This paper explores the effect of housing equity on both the residential mobility and the commuting pattern of homeowners. We merge administrative registers for the Danish population and properties and get highly reliable micro data for our analysis. We find that low and negative housing equity substantially reduces residential mobility among homeowners. The negative effect of locked-in low equity families on labor market mobility may be mitigated by commuting. However, our results show that family heads in low or negative equity homes are not found to commute more than households with higher housing equity, but also that a considerable fraction of home owning family heads commute. The analysis of the joint decision of homeowners to commute or move shows that the option of moving, as an alternative to not moving and not commuting, is chosen by five to six percent of homeowners with low housing equity, while the option of not moving but commuting is chosen by 60%.     

House prices, wealth effects, and the Singapore macroeconomy

This paper examines the effect housing wealth has upon aggregate consumption in Singapore. While past research has focused only on changes in private housing wealth, the residential market in Singapore is dominated by the public housing sector. The massive public housing segment can generate potentially different wealth effects from standard private housing markets given the former’s unique institutional features. In particular, public housing owners who sell their units at market rates can repurchase a public flat at subsidized prices whereas private homeowners typically cannot. We estimate the link between consumption expenditure and both private and public housing wealth using a VARX approach for the Q1:1990–Q4:2002 period. We find that changes in private house prices have no significant effect on aggregate consumption. In contrast, public housing wealth effects are larger and more persistent.     

瑞士住宅市场特征解读及启示

与其他国家相比,瑞士住宅市场有四大特征:一是瑞士居民主体以租房为主,房地产的自有化率比较低;二是瑞士的房价高,但住宅市场保持平稳,并未出现周期性的高潮阶段和低谷阶段;三是瑞士住宅市场的空置率很低;四是公共租赁房占据租赁市场的最大份额。这些特征可以为我国的房地产政策的长效机制提供借鉴。     

TESTS OF THE STANDARD URBAN MODEL: A Micro (Trade-Off) Alternative

Three methods of testing the validity of the monocentric model (the negative house price gradient, the wasteful commuting approach, and the hypothesis of a trade-off between housing expenditures and commuting costs) are evaluated. The negative house price gradient is not supported by several recent hedonic models. "Wasteful" commuting is a poor test because it persists even a policentric world and may be more the result of the weakness of journey-to-work minimization as a key determinant of residence and/or workplace location. This study uses the commuting information presented in the 1985 American Housing Survey in eight large metropolitan areas to show that the trade-off hypothesis fails badly. Heterogeneous Preference for housing, commuting and indeed for all goods and services, combined with a wide variety of workplaces and choice of residential locations at highly, variable rents and house prices may be the major reason why the trade-off is not generally observed.     

Risk shocks and housing supply: A quantitative analysis

This paper analyzes the role of stochastic uncertainty in a multi-sector housing model with financial frictions. We include time varying uncertainty (i.e. risk shocks) in the technology shocks that affect housing production and provide estimates of the time-series properties of risk shocks by using firm level productivity data. The analysis demonstrates that risk shocks to the housing production sector are a quantitatively important impulse mechanism for understanding housing price movements. Specifically, the model can match the volatility of housing prices observed in the data. It is also demonstrated that adjustment costs are important in replicating the contemporaneous correlation of housing prices with GDP and residential investment. Critically, bankruptcy costs act as an endogenous markup factor in housing prices and are an important determinant of house price volatility. However, in comparison to housing demand shocks, risk shocks have low explanatory power for real quantities.     

Spatial patterns of residential development

A simple dynamic model of residential development with durable housing, where all households are identical and all developers have perfect foresight, is studied. It is shown that, unlike the case of static models, it is quite possible that house size decreases, and thus population density increases, with distance from the city center and that the house rent curve has positive gradient in certain area.     

Slow but stable(ish) house price growth lies ahead

• ? UK house price growth is running out of steam. And with household incomes squeezed and the affordability of housing stretched, we think a prolonged period of very modest growth lies ahead. But the prospect of a crash is remote.
• ? At 2.6% in Q2 2017, annual house price growth is presently running at a four‐year low. This is a step change down from the recent peak of nearly 10% in mid‐2014 and average growth of 4% over the current economic expansion.
• ? Three developments are likely to lie behind this slowdown. The first is weak growth in households' real income, cutting the ability to save for a deposit or finance a move up the housing ladder. That said, past periods of sluggish income growth have not always been associated with low house price inflation.
• ? The second is the consequence of recent tax hikes imposed on buy‐to‐let investors and second‐home owners, which theory suggests should be capitalised in lower property prices.
• ? The third and perhaps most important reason is the increasing unaffordability of housing to an ever‐widening sub‐set of the population. The ratio of house prices to earnings is almost back at its pre‐crisis record. And the income of the average mortgage borrower is close to £60,000, more than double the average annual wage.
• ? This third factor has implications beyond price growth, suggesting both a permanently lower level of transactions and a further decline in the number of households with mortgages, continuing a trend which began at the beginning of the century.
• ? But set against these headwinds is the cushion provided by record lows for both mortgage rates and mortgage affordability. Overall, house prices are caught between a lack of traditional drivers of accelerating growth, but equally an absence of forces which have typically caused prices to fall. Hence, our expectation of a period of sluggish, but relatively stable, growth.

     

The Market for Residential Architecture: 19th Century Row Houses in Boston′s South End

This study explores the market response to a major 19th century American urban architectural form, the row house. The paper presents an hedonic price index for a set of housing characteristics including lot and house size, location amenities within the neighborhood, construction materials, architectural style, and detailed architectural features. The homogeneity in form and layout of the row houses coupled with the variety of architectural styles and detailed features provides an unusual opportunity to test the effect of architecture on market value. The housing characteristics included in the study account for 88% of the price variance across the sampled row houses. The evidence marshalled here suggests that residential architecture matters in the marketplace and that specific architectural features are more highly valued when they differentiate one row house from its immediate neighbors.     

Hedonic Model在二手房价格分析中的应用——以昆明市为例

以昆明市城区二手房为研究对象,利用Hedonic模型和统计学方法研究房价与特征属性的定量关系。结果表明半对数函数模型的拟合度最高,回归系数表明二手房区位特征中环线位置对房价的影响最大。住宅属性对房价影响程度依次是环线位置、轨道交通、物业管理费、容积率、教育配套、公交线路、装修程度、建筑面积。     

Subterranean Commodification: Informal Housing and the Legalization of Basement Suites in Vancouver from 1928 to 2009

This article draws on Margaret Radin's theorization of ‘contested commodities' to explore the process whereby informal housing becomes formalized while also being shaped by legal regulation. In seeking to move once‐informal housing into the domain of official legality, cities can seldom rely on a simple legal framework of private‐law principles of property and contract. Instead, they face complex trade‐offs between providing basic needs and affordability and meeting public‐law norms around living standards, traditional neighbourhood feel and the environment. This article highlights these issues through an examination of the uneven process of legal formalization of basement apartments in Vancouver, Canada. We chose a lengthy period—from 1928 to 2009—to explore how basement apartments became a vital source of housing often at odds with city planning that has long favoured a low‐density residential built form. We suggest that Radin's theoretical account makes it possible to link legalization and official market construction with two questions: whether to permit commodification and how to permit commodification. Real‐world commodification processes—including legal sanction—reflect hybridization, pragmatic decision making and regulatory compromise. The resolution of questions concerning how to legalize commodification are also intertwined with processes of market expansion.