A Cash Flow Model of Rational Housing Tenure Choice*

This paper develops a model of housing costs in a cash flow framework. The cash flow approach allows both the consumption and investment aspects of tenure choice to be analyzed. By solving the model for the rental flow equivalent to any owning situation, we can determine whether or not a household would buy or rent from an economic perspective. The results are very sensitive to the household's income, the expected duration of occupancy, the mortgage interest rate, and inflation expectations. The results suggest that “rule-of-thumb” generalizations about tenure choice are often ill-founded, and that studies of tenure choice need to explicitly consider the interaction of income, taxes, length of occupancy and expectations.     

Residential Immobility of the Elderly: An Empirical Investigation

This paper investigates the reasons for the substantially lower residential mobility rates among the elderly than the non-elderly. Households with low propensities to move are posited to be those that face few benefits from moving—that is, they are near equilibrium with respect to their housing consumption and tenure choice—or those that face large costs to moving. Using household data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, measures of housing disequilibrium and tenure disequilibrium were constructed. Elderly renters were found to be largely in equilibrium and would benefit little from moving. In contrast, elderly homeowners are more likely to be in substantial disequilibrium than their younger counterparts. Conclusions as to which costs to moving are most salient could not be made.     

Taxes and the User Cost of Capital for Owner-Occupied Housing

Owner-occupied housing is said to be favored in the tax code because the return on owner's equity is not taxed and mortgage interest and property taxes can be deducted in the computation of one's income tax base. The special tax treatment reduces the user cost of capital for owner-occupied housing.
The issue treated in this paper is the measurement of the tax rate to be employed in the user cost calculations. It is argued that different tax rates are appropriate for the tenure choice and quantity-demanded decisions, and that these values depend on the detailed tax position of the household and the method of finance. Average 1977 tax rates for household in different income ranges are calculated using the NBER TAXSIM microeconomic data file on individual tax returns.     

Finnish Homes—Through Passages or Traps?

This is a study of tenure choice, housing demand and mobility in the submarkets of the Helsinki metropolitan area. The empirical analysis is based on data on households, type of tenure, housing characteristics and mobility for a sample of Helsinki residents at the end of 1980s. According to our results the probability of owning is affected not only by user costs of alternative tenure forms but also by permanent income and demographic variables. Results from the tenure specific housing demand models indicate that there are non-neutralities in the housing markets. Permanent income elasticities of housing demand are clearly positive in owner-occupied sector and systematically higher than in the rented sector. The demand for owner-occupied housing depends very strongly on the age of the household head. User cost per housing unit affects housing demand negatively in both tenure forms. Effective demand is greater in private housing sector. The results suggest that owner-occupied living is preferred with heavily subsidized households the least likely to move. In the rental sector, where the probability of moving is higher, it is also true that the most heavily subsidized households are the least likely to move.     

Tenure Decisions Under a Progressive Tax Structure

Although certain provisions of the federal tax code provide subsidies to homeowners, others provide subsidies to renters in the form of tax incentives for investments in rental housing. We demonstrate that the renter subsidies dominate for households in low tax brackets whereas homeowner subsidies dominate for households in high tax brackets. Moreover the dollar magnitude involved in the tenure decision can easily push a household across tax brackets. Based on this relation, we identify an upper bound on the value of a dwelling that a household with a given income will prefer to own rather than rent for tax purposes. If the household were to choose a dwelling valued in excess of this household-specific upper bound, the tax effect would reverse and favor renting. This complication provides a possible explanation for apparent tax anomalies in tenure decisions, i.e., high income renters and/or low income homeowners.     

Forecasting Housing Markets: Lessons Learned

Forecasting changes in housing finance (instruments and institutions), housing demand (tenure, quantity, and real price), and housing production requires forecasting numerous exogenous factors—inflation, government policy, and demographic forces being the most obvious—and interpreting their impacts on the housing market. We use forecasts made over the last two decades to illustrate the importance of these variables and of interpreting their impacts appropriately.     

Homeownership Returns, Tenure Choice and Inflation

This paper empirically investigates the impact of inflation on homeownership returns and tenure choice when the assumptions underlying the user cost of housing are modified to reflect separately the effects of unanticipated and anticipated inflation. The analysis demonstrates that when the user cost model is specified to reflect the impact of anticipated inflation on house prices, the mortgage interest rate and the capitalization rate, the returns to homeownership are lower than determined by previous user cost studies and are consistent with a reasonably efficient market.     

Taxes,Inflation, Speculation and the Cost of Homeownership*

This article formulates a measure of the cost of homeownership which accounts for (1) the tax subsidy to homeowning, (2) the element of expected inflation in mortgage interest rates and (3) speculation about appreciation in real house prices. Each component of the total cost of homeowning is estimated annually across the decade of the 1970s. Total real costs are found to have trended down during the period, primarily because of a decline in the real interest rate and increases both in the real tax subsidy and in expectations of real appreciation.     

Another Look at Tenure Choice, Inflation, and Taxes

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of inflation on the demand for housing. The first part of the paper presents a theoretical model that identifies the effects of inflation on the after-tax cost of housing and the choice between rental and owner-occupied housing. The second part discusses the results of a simulation model that measures the effect of inflation on the aggregate demand for housing, the aggregate homeownership rate, and the price of housing. The paper concludes that while inflation can be expected to increase the aggregate demand for housing and the price of housing relative to the general price level, inflation should ultimately lead to lower rates of homeownership. A corollary that is probably more relevant today is that lower inflation rates should reduce the real value of the housing stock and increase the homeownership rate. The paper also contains forecasts of the impact of the Tax Reform Act (TRA) of 1986 upon housing demand and the probability of homeownership for a variety of households.     

Inflation Protection from Homeownership: Long‐Run Evidence, 1814–2008

This article examines the inflation hedging capacity of the private home. We employ unique long‐term data for inflation, house price dynamics and rents for Amsterdam dating back to 1814, allowing us to study total housing returns in different inflation regimes and for varying investment horizons. Our Amsterdam data show that homeownership's protection against actual and expected inflation increases with the investment horizon. This increase is especially strong for horizons up to 10 years. Inflation protection from housing is stronger when inflation is persistent, and the hedging capacities of housing regarding unexpected inflation are weak.     

Housing Tenure Transitions of Older Households: What is the Role of Child Proximity?

This study examines the role of proximity of children to their parents and recent moves of children within a proximate distance in housing tenure transitions of older households. This study is the first to investigate the interplay between health status of older households, moves of their children and a household's decision to make housing tenure transitions. In doing so, we rely on longitudinal household data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics with residential location information at the census tract level. The results demonstrate that after controlling for the financial and demographic characteristics of children, living near children reduces the likelihood of making a housing tenure transition for older households, but that the impact of distance is not monotonic with respect to the degree of geographic distances. The results also demonstrate that if a child enters or moves closer to her or his parents’ home, it increases the probability that older households exit homeownership. Finally, we find no evidence that children's moves mitigate the likelihood that their older parents whose health deteriorates become renters.     

House Prices and Inflation

The present paper examines the long-run impact of inflation on homeowner equity by investigating the relationship between house prices and the prices of nonhousing goods and services, rather than return series and inflation rates as in previous empirical studies on the inflation hedging ability of real estate. There are two reasons for this methodological departure from prior practice: (1) while the total return on housing cannot be accurately measured, the total return on housing is fully reflected in housing prices, and (2) given that using returns or differencing a time series leads to a loss of long-run information contained in the series, valuable long-run information can be captured by using prices. Also, unlike previous related studies, we exclude housing costs from goods and services prices to avoid potential bias in estimating how inflation affects housing prices. Monthly data series are collected for existing and for new house prices as well as the consumer price index excluding housing costs for the period 1968–2000. Based on both autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models and recursive regressions, the empirical results yield estimated Fisher coefficients that are consistently greater than one over the sample period. Thus, we infer that house prices are a stable inflation hedge in the long run.     

Excess Returns, Inflation and the Efficiency of the Housing Market

This paper examines the influence that unexpected inflation has on the reported time pattern in housing returns. Two alternative models of expected inflation are used to study its effect: a rational expectations model and an adaptive expectations model. Findings indicate that both estimates of unexpected inflation are positively correlated with excess returns to housing. If inflation expectations are assumed to have been adaptive during the 1970s and early 1980s, serial correlation in the excess returns is shown to be greatly diminished when adjusted to control for unexpected inflation. However, substantial inertia in the pattern of the adjusted return series remains.     

Expected and Actual Effects of Housing Allowances on Housing Prices

Most analysts and policy makers expected fullscale housing allowance programs to substantially disturb local housing markets, causing housing prices tb increase sharply. This paper reviews conjectures about expected price effects, summarizes evidence from the Housing Assistance Supply Experiment, and explains why the program did not engender the expected price inflation.     

Inflation,Taxes, and the Demand For Housing*

Inflation affects homeownership and housing adversely through the “real-payment tilt” of the conventional mortgage. Expectations of additional housing price appreciation, however, may induce households to invest in housing. This paper uses household data to estimate the demand for homeownership and housing, and it takes explicit notice of expectations of housing price appreciation. The results indicate for each 1% increase in the inflation rate that the conditional probability of purchase falls by 3%. Interest rate effects outweigh appreciation and tax effects. Given the decision to purchase, housing appreciation expectations do not have large effects on the amount purchased.     

Housing Finance in the 1980's

Strains evident in the housing finance system on the eve of the 80's suggest significant difficulties in meeting the housing demands of the decade ahead. The annual increase in residential mortgages outstanding had climbed to historic levels, relative to GNP, without raising residential construction spending above its ordinary share of GNP. This very weak housing bang for the mortgage buck is traceable, ultimately, to the soaring volume of sales in the used home market, relative to those in the new home market. With significant inflation rates continuing through the 1980's, mortgage lenders will be under great pressure from demands to refinance the existing housing stock, even if the rate of ownership turnover does not persist at the levels of the late 70's. And, as the dollar demands mount, for new and used housing purchases, lenders may find repayment flows from earlier loans continuing to provide a historically small fraction of the funds they need in supplying these demands.     

Yet Another View on Why a Home Is One's Castle

We compute equity-based real after-tax rates of return for homeowners and landlords in the United States for 1952–2005. The study confirms that a combined aggregate for residential housing provides a high average net return and low volatility, has low correlation with financial assets and can provide hedge against inflation. The efficient frontier analysis shows that the optimal portfolio for a household with a coefficient of relative risk aversion of four to five is one which contains a bit larger amount of housing than stocks, close to what one observes in the real world.     

Housing Return and Construction Cycles

This paper presents a general equilibrium model of the residential housing market. Within the model housing returns, housing construction, mortgage loan terms, and household maintenance behavior are all endogenous. These interacting elements tie expected housing returns to expected changes in family wealth. As a result: (1) families are credit constrained; (2) mortgage loan-to-value ratios can be used to forecast future housing returns; (3) developers acquire land when expected housing returns lie above the rate of interest and then develop when housing returns lie below. Thus, their holdings and construction decisions also forecast housing returns.     

Taxation of Residential Property in New York City: The Sources of Differential Treatment

Intrajurisdictional variations in the effective residential property tax are analyzed for New York City. Significant variation is observed by type of structure, by borough, by income quartiles, and over time. Cross-sectional regression equations indicate that effective rates tend to vary inversely with income and positively with the proportion of poverty households and building size. Market values, on the other hand, tend to vary inversely with poverty households and building age, and positively with income and building size. Over time, effective tax rates show a strong inverse relationship with the rate of inflation.     

Housing Price Indexes from the 1974–1983 SIMSA Annual Housing Surveys

This paper reports residential real estate price indexes computed from the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) Annual Housing Survey (AHS) for the 1974 through 1983 period. During this ten-year period, the U.S. Bureau of the Census conducted detailed surveys of the housing stock in sixty metropolitan areas in a three to four year cycle. This information is used to compute tenure specific hedonic housing price indexes for: (1) the entire metropolitan housing market; (2) separately for properties located in the central city and in the suburbs (whenever central city locations are identified); and (3) for three points in the dwelling quality distribution-for substandard housing (using the definition employed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development), for new housing (housing less than three years old and not substandard), and for existing standard quality housing (everything else). In addition, the hedonic prices reported here are adjusted for the finite sample bias introduced when taking the exponential of a lognormally distributed random variable.