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Determinants of the Homeownership Rate: An International Perspective
Abstract
We present a comprehensive model of household tenure choice that guides our review of the literature on the impacts of tax and subsidy policies and focuses our critiques of various methodologies. We discuss the impacts on the likelihood of homeownership of house price capitalization and individuals' choices of household structure, loan-to-value ratio, and wealth accumulation. We argue that the best empirical studies use panel household-level data and a large set of measures of housing taxes and subsidies, macroeconomic variables, and household characteristics. We review three studies that illustrate the benefits and challenges of modeling the homeownership decision across countries.
... It can be said that, if the factors affecting housing demand were to be categorised under two groups as micro and macro factors, micro factors would be social preferences and sociodemographic characteristics that are mostly evaluated within the framework of the household; and macro factors would be variables such as housing loans, interest rates, and taxes (Bourassa et al., 2015). ...
The NSW Government's 2020 proposal to replace stamp duty on all properties with an annual tax based on unimproved land values is estimated to increase home ownership by 6.6%, through changes in purchaser holding periods, a shift of tax burden from investors to owner‐occupiers and a relaxed deposit constraint. The model of home ownership highlights the importance of purchasers' holding periods, with implications for the effects of tax reforms, institutional ownership of rental properties and population growth. The paper provides an easily calibrated model of home purchases that could be used to quantify home ownership effects of various tax reforms.
This article uses survey data to estimate non‐cash income from imputed rents, using a consistent methodology for all countries to assemble comparable statistics that allow for a valid inter‐country comparison. We can confirm a significant impact of non‐cash income and find an inequality‐decreasing effect for the unconditional income distribution which highly correlates with the proportion of owner‐occupiers in the respective countries. However, aggregated inequality measures are not suited to analyze the increase in the conditional income inequality between owner‐occupiers and renters, who do not obtain income from imputed rents by definition. Therefore, we apply a reweighting decomposition that controls for the heterogeneous housing characteristics among European countries and allows us to decompose the distributional changes into a part that is explained by the proportion of tenure types and household size and a remaining part that reflects the relative dispersion of imputed rents along the income distribution.
The historical-comparative study of social democracy and cooperative organization are the foster children of historical sociology. This article offers a first account of systematic ideological differences in social-democratic ideology regarding private ownership and different cooperative traditions in the housing sphere of Northern European and continental German-speaking countries. The long-run trajectory of housing welfare regimes in these two country groups has been one of divergence: Nordic countries have moved to Anglo-Saxon levels of high homeownership, high levels of mortgage indebtedness, and house price increases, whereas private tenancy, lower indebtedness, and lower price increases still characterize their German counterparts. Based on historical case studies of Germany and Norway, we argue that the divergence in these two countries can be understood by the different social-democratic and cooperative solutions to the urban housing question from the 1920s onward. Supported by a pro-ownership social democracy, Norway started to develop housing cooperatives of the owner cooperative type, whereas German social democracy was in favor of associations of the tenant cooperative type. The differential growth of these two types of cooperatives and disparities in social democratic party ideology contributed to the urban housing divergence between the two country groups that has been observed ever since. We argue, more generally, that varieties of social democracy and welfare-anticipating cooperative organizations are important in helping us understand the welfare differences between countries.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to highlight the determinants of market rents and to build a hedonic market rent index for each urban area and rental sector in France for the period 1970–2013. The authors also analyse the market rent dynamics over this period, with a special attention to the turning points in the French housing policy.
Design/methodology/approach
For this purpose, the authors implement a hedonic model, called stratified time dummy variable, using the Box–Cox transformation as a functional form.
Findings
The contribution of this study to the housing research is threefold: First, the study improves our understanding of the French’s rental submarket specificities and their valuation. It sheds new light on the determinants of rents. Second, this study builds a hedonic market rent index over the period 1970–2013 for each geographical and sectoral segment (Paris urban area, urban areas of more and less than 100,000 inhabitants and private and public rental sectors). Third, this study explains rent dynamics focusing on the turning points in the French housing policy.
Originality/value
Finally, the authors provide the first long-term market rent index in France by submarket (geographical and sectoral). In the case of the French market, no long-term market rent exists. The only long series available is an indexed rent.
Despite the fairly recent start of housing reform since the late 1990s, China has transformed rapidly from a country dominated by public rents to a country with one of the highest homeownership rates. As China has experienced tremendous international trade growth during this period, this paper investigates whether and how export expansion may affect homeownership at the county level, combining China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) with an instrument of regional export. It is found that export expansion has a negative impact on homeownership and a positive effect on housing space per resident. In addition, these impacts are more significant among households with lower income, younger ages, employed status, and local hukou. Empirical evidence also implies that income inequality, the influx of migrants, and housing affordability are the main channels through which export expansion may affect homeownership.
Home ownership is not only an important asset, but also provides an income stream in kind. If individuals use pension savings to purchase real estate, they face a trade-off between alleviating borrowing constraints when young and lower liquid retirement means when old. We study the decision to withdraw retirement assets for home purchase in advance by analyzing a recent reform. A change in down payment requirements made such early withdrawals less attractive, as borrowers are obliged to provide a larger amount of non-pension equity for a home purchase. Using individual-level data from a large Swiss occupational pension provider, we find that the share of individuals who withdrew in a given year dropped by one sixth. For the withdrawers, the average share of pension assets withdrawn decreased by 5.1 percentage points, mainly driven by individuals with lower levels of pension wealth and of older age. Nonetheless, our analysis also shows that while limiting second pillar withdrawals can aggravate the borrowing constraint to some degree, they are not the only constraining factor when purchasing a home.
We examine impacts of single-family home foreclosures on rents for 513 apartment buildings in Shelby County, Tennessee during 2001 through 2016. We find significant, positive non-linear relationships between foreclosure rates and apartment rents, suggesting that foreclosure market shocks increase demand for apartments and cause occupancy changes from owner to renter. Specifically, rents increase with increasing nearby neighborhood single-family home foreclosure rates. Foreclosure effects were exacerbated by the higher acute foreclosure rates occurring during the 2007-09 financial crisis, indicating greater price impacts on rents, while, during periods with lower foreclosure rates, price impacts were more attenuated. Also, impacts on rents vary by rent levels with greater rent increases for higher-end apartments relative to lower-end units.
We examine the impact of neighbourhood ethnic diversity on homeownership using 19 waves of household panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. We find that ethnic diversity is associated with a lower probability of homeownership. Specifically, a movement from complete ethnic homogeneity to complete heterogeneity is associated with up to a 31.3 percentage point decrease in the probability of homeownership. Our results also show that trust, neighbourhood satisfaction and belongingness, which are lower in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods, are important channels through which ethnic diversity operate to reduce the probability of homeownership. We suggest policies to promote trust in multicultural societies with high levels of ethnic diversity with a view to addressing the negative relationship between ethnic diversity and homeownership.
Recently, the homeownership rate of immigrants in Germany has increased by more than 20 percentage points. To shed light on this sharp rise, this paper investigates the driving forces of the trend in the homeownership rate of immigrant households in Germany between 1996 to 2005 and 2001 to 2011 using a probit-based non-linear decomposition method. Empirical findings suggest that 50 % of the change in immigrants’ homeownership rate within the first time period can be explained by characteristics such as age and educational attainment. In the second time period, the explanatory power of characteristics is almost zero, indicating that it is rather the favorable economic and institutional environment as well as changes in immigrants’ tenure choice process that contributed to the substantial increase in immigrants’ homeownership rate in Germany. We additionally find that housing quality of immigrant homeowners has slightly improved as well, but that there is still a substantial nativity gap in housing quality among tenants as well as among owners.
Homeownership is an important component of the New Zealand lifestyle. In recent decades, however, the ownership rate has been declining and the reasons are poorly understood. This paper explains the decline using a decomposition technique that has been applied in other contexts. We find that borrowing constraints and ethnicity have been particularly important contributors to the decline. Rapidly rising house prices clearly have played a major role in the inability of income to keep up with prices and the increased impact of borrowing constraints. We also show that the increased down payment requirements imposed by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand in 2013 are unlikely to have affected the ownership rate.
Using data for six metropolitan housing markets in three countries, this article provides a comparison of methods used to measure house price bubbles. We use an asset pricing approach to identify bubble periods retrospectively and then compare those results with results produced by six other methods. We also apply the various methods recursively to assess their ability to identify bubbles as they form. In view of the complexity of the asset pricing approach, we conclude that a simple price-rent ratio measure is a reliable method both ex post and in real time. Our results have important policy implications because a reliable signal that a bubble is forming could be used to avoid further house price increases.
This paper describes the wealth accumulation of American youth and relates this behavior to their eventual housing choices. We develop a data set that links wealth profiles of youth with constant- quality house prices and tenure choice. A panel data set is compiled for youth age 20-33 for the years 1985 through 1990. We construct wealth profiles for each household over the six year period and indicate how wealth varies with labor supply, marriage, fertility, gender, education, race/ethnicity, and tenure choice. We find renters' wealth accumulates rapidly in the year before and year of first homeownership. The factors related to this increase are marriage, increased labor supply by married women, and gifts/inheritances. Of particular interest is the finding of an inverse U-shaped relationship between the local real price of housing and middle and upper income renters' wealth and married female labor supply. Also, youth in high housing cost localities tend to live in groups at a greater rate compared to those in low cost areas.
The US President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform has recommended changes to income tax concessions for homeowners. Consistent with the opinions of many economists, the tax reform panel concluded that the existing tax concessions are not particularly effective. The housing and mortgage industry have opposed the reforms, in part due to a fear that the reforms will reduce the homeownership rate. In this paper, 1998 American Housing Survey data are used to estimate a tenure choice equation and to simulate hypothetical changes in tax concessions. Focusing on young households who are likely to be on the margin between renting and owning, it is concluded that the mortgage interest and property tax deductions reduce the homeownership rate for these households due to effects on house prices. The tax credit proposed by the Advisory Panel would be likely to have a similar effect.
We model individual demand for housing over the life cycle, and show the aggregate implications of this behaviour. Individuals delay purchasing their first home when incomes are low or uncertain. Higher house prices lead households to downsize, rather than to stop being owners. Fixed costs (property transactions taxes) have important impacts on welfare (a wealth effect) and house purchase decisions (substitution effect). In aggregate, positive house price shocks lead to consumption booms among the old but falls in consumption for the young, and reduced housing demand; positive income shocks lead to consumption booms among the young and increased housing demand.
Homeownership rates have increased significantly in many OECD countries over recent decades. Using micro-econometric decomposition techniques, this paper shows that part of this increase can be explained by changes in the characteristics of households, including age, household structure, incomes and education. Nevertheless, a significant portion of the change in homeownership rates remains unexplained by shifts in household characteristics, leaving a potential role for public policy in explaining developments in homeownership rates. Panel estimates suggest that the relaxation of down-payment constraints on mortgage loans has increased homeownership rates among credit-constrained households over recent decades, resulting in a rise in the aggregate homeownership rate that is comparable to the impact of population ageing. In countries where tax relief on mortgage debt financing is generous, however, the expansionary impact of mortgage market innovations on homeownership is smaller. This is consistent with the tendency for such housing tax reliefs to be capitalised into real house prices, which may crowd-out some financially constrained households from homeownership at the margin. The impact of housing policies regulating the functioning of the rental market, such as rent regulation and provisions for tenure security, on tenure choice is also explored.Les déterminants du taux de propriété immobilière dans les pays de l'OCDELes taux d'accession à la propriété immobilière ont augmenté de façon significative dans de nombreux pays de l'OCDE au cours des dernières décennies. En utilisant des techniques micro-économétriques, cette étude montre qu'une partie de cette augmentation est expliquée par des changements dans les caractéristiques des ménages, y compris l'âge, la structure du ménage, les revenus et l'éducation. Néanmoins, une part importante de la variation des taux d'accession à la propriété ne s’explique pas par des changements dans les caractéristiques du ménage, ce qui laisse un rôle potentiel aux politiques publiques pour expliquer l'évolution des taux d'accession à la propriété. Des estimations de panel suggèrent que l'assouplissement des conditions d’apport pour les prêts hypothécaires a augmenté les taux d’accession à la propriété parmi les ménages en butte à des contraintes de crédits, entraînant un effet sur les taux d' accession à la propriété globale comparable à l'impact du vieillissement de la population. Dans les pays où des allégements d’impôt sur le financement de la dette hypothécaire sont généreux, cependant, l'effet expansionniste des innovations sur le marché hypothécaire sur l'accession à la propriété est moindre. Ceci est cohérent avec la tendance pour ces dégrèvements fiscaux à être capitalisées dans les prix réels des logements, ce qui peut évincer, à la marge, certains ménages en difficulté financièrement à l’accession à la propriété. L'impact des politiques du logement qui régissent le fonctionnement du marché locatif sur le mode d'occupation est également exploré.
The aim of this paper is to review the international evidence on the impacts of mortgage interest deductions on homeownership rates. The probability of becoming a homeowner is a function of the relative cost of owning and renting, borrowing constraints, permanent household income, and a set of taste variables. The relative cost of owning and renting is in part a function of house prices and the annual user cost of owner-occupied housing. Tax policies affect the user cost of owner-occupied housing and, in turn, the probability of becoming a homeowner. They also affect the price of housing due to capitalization effects. We draw on a number of empirical studies that have been conducted for several countries in North America, Europe, Australasia, and Asia. The empirical evidence suggests that, contrary to popular wisdom, the MID generally does not increase the ownership rate. This result is likely due to the fact that the MID is capitalized into house prices, especially where housing supply is inelastic.
This paper models a household's choice of tenure and demand for housing services as a joint decision imposing the restriction that both discrete and continuous decisions are derived from a single preference ordering. The utility index for households is the translog form of the reciprocal indirect utility function allowing for random preferences. Each household chooses between the two main tenures, the owner-occupied and subsidised rental sectors, but households may be rationed in either or both of these sectors and refused admission, in which case they are assumed to enter the third sector, uncontrolled rental. The model is estimated on UK data for 5895 households.
The relative cost of owning and renting housing and housing affordability have been clearly established as important determinants of home ownership. But the roles of marital status and history have been largely ignored. In this paper we show that both current marital status and past history affect ownership. Past history matters because wealth accumulation is greater among couple households than singles owing largely to economies of scale in housing consumption. Moreover, wealth is lost upon divorce. In effect, past marital history affects the affordability of owner housing. This result is shown in the estimation of model explaining wealth, leverage and tenure choice using Australian datasets.
We explore the determinants of the distribution of owner occupancy rates across age groups using a collection of microeconomic data on 14 OECD countries. In most, the survey is repeated over time. This allows us to construct an international dataset, merging data on 39 national household surveys with aggregate data on down payment ratios. We find strong evidence that the availability of mortgage finance – as measured by down payment ratios – affects the distribution of owner occupancy rates across age groups, especially at the young end. The results are consistent with previous theoretical models and have important implications for the debate on the relation between saving and growth.
This paper examines the extent to which wealth accumulation for housing purchase increases household savings and suppresses consumption. The study employs an estimation method based on simultaneous equations with limited dependent variables developed by Nelson and Olson to examine the relationship between wealth accumulation and housing purchase plans, using data relating to young Japanese renters. The estimation results provide evidence that young Japanese households severely reduce their consumption by around 30–40 percent.
Housing demand is examined by looking quite specifically at the income and price variables based on individual household data. Permanent and transitory incomes are computed through instrumental variables related to human and nonhuman wealth. A price is constructed by spatially varying hedonic techniques. Separation of measured income into permanent and transitory components substantially improves the predictive power of the housing demand estimation and leads to demand elasticities of +1 and −1 with respect to permanent income and price. The permanent income elasticity is roughly twice the measured income elasticity.
This paper reports the results of an econometric analysis of tenure choice in Australia′s two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne. Particular attention is given to assessing the significance of the user cost of owner-occupied housing for tenure decisions. Using cross-sectional data from a 1991 housing survey, this study shows that including user costs in the tenure choice model results in a substantial improvement in goodness-of-fit, but also causes the marginal probability for permanent income to become negative. It is suggested that this may reflect a tendency for higher income groups in the two cities to live in inner locations where renting is more common because prices are high relative to rents.
This paper examines the effects of the current income tax treatment of owner-occupied housing on the quantity of housing consumed and on the tenure choice by various groups. Cross-sectional data for 1970 are used to estimate jointly tenure choice and housing demand equations. The equations' parameters are used to assess the efficiency and equity implications of the relevant tax law provisions.
Most countries have tax provisions and subsidies to promote homeownership. These provisions generate an asymmetry in the tax treatment of owner- and rental-occupied housing, which affects the incentives to supply tenant-occupied housing. This paper analyzes the quantitative importance of the interaction of these provisions with the progressivity of income taxation in the context of an overlapping generations model with housing and rental markets. The model replicates the key facts observed in the economy, as well as distributional patterns of ownership, house size, and landlord behavior. The model suggests that the progressivity of income taxation can amplify or mitigate the effects of the asymmetries with important implications for housing tenure, housing consumption, portfolio reallocations, and welfare that differ from those reported in the literature.
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Economics, 1964.
This paper utilizes microdata to directly quantify the impact of mortgage underwriting criteria on individual homeownership propensities. To determine whether a family is constrained by these criteria, the optimal home purchase price is estimated. The results indicate that wealth and income constraints both reduce homeownership propensities, with a stronger impact for wealth constraints. Mortgage market innovations of the early 1980s seem to have reduced these effects. The research indicates, however, that even in well-developed capital markets, the presence of borrowing constraints adversely affects homeownership propensities. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.
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.
We analyze by far the most extensive data base yet employed in estimating capitalization" of below-market interest rates into asset prices: nearly 300,000 sales of owner-occupied homes in" Sweden from 1981 to 1993 with 40,000 including government subsidized interest rates. Our" estimates indicates very clearly that interest subsidies are capitalized into house prices. The" below-market financing parameter is consistently significantly negative in all model" specifications, irrespective of assumptions about the degree of foresight structure and interest rate measure for all ten regions that we have studied. In our favored model" specification the estimated capitalization coefficients center on minus unity capitalization.
This paper investigates the relationship between short-term interest rates and bank risk. Using a unique database that includes quarterly balance sheet information for listed banks operating in the European Union and the United States in the last decade, we find evidence that unusually low interest rates over an extended period of time contributed to an increase in banks' risk. This result holds for a wide range of measures of risk, as well as macroeconomic and institutional controls.
Homeownership rates equal the number of households that own homes divided by the number of households in the population. Differences in the propensity to form a household, therefore, may contribute to changes in homeownership rates over time in addition to long-standing racial gaps in homeownership. We examine these issues on an age-specific basis using data from the 1970 to 2000 public use microsamples of the decennial census. Results indicate that lower headship rates tend to reduce homeownership rates. This pattern is most notable for individuals in their early and mid 20s. For these individuals, declining headship rates between 1970 and 2000 reduced homeownership rates by three to five percentage points. Moreover, 2000 African American headship rates narrow white-black gaps in homeownership by roughly three percentage points, whereas 2000 Hispanic headship rates widen white-Hispanic gaps in homeownership by two to three percentage points. Thus, controlling for differences in headship behavior, white-black homeownership gaps are somewhat more severe than previously recognized, but the reverse is true for white-Hispanic gaps. Copyright 2007 American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association
This paper specifies and estimates a model of housing demand that explicitly includes the decision of individuals to form independent households. Parameter estimates reveal a considerable response of headship rates not only to income but also to housing prices. Analysis of housing policies ignoring the endogeneity of household formation is thus potentially biased. The model is employed to evaluate the effects of a housing voucher program. Simulated responses indicate that such a program creates a substantial additional demand for housing due to its positive impact on the propensity of young and elderly persons to live independently.
Given falling birth rates, ageing baby boomers approaching retirement age as well as a pension crisis in most advanced economies, understanding the characteristics of the labour supply function of the elderly have taken on a new significance. Even in developing countries, with labour surplus economies, this is a major issue as these poor countries try to build a pension scheme with at least a minimum amount of state provision for the elderly. What motivates retired people to enter or continue in the labour force is the focus of our analysis. We use panel data from Korea which is an interesting country since it transited from developing to developed economy status within the last few decades and therefore exhibits characteristics of both underdevelopment and economic advancement. The econometric methods include probit models of: pooled data; panel data with random effects; and 2SCML, to allow for possible endogeneity bias induced by the self-declared health status of the elderly. We stress the crucial importance of pecuniary and non-pecuniary factors in determining labour supply of the elderly. Contrary to expectations, non-pecuniary factors such as health status are crucial in the decision-making process of whether to work or not to work for the elderly.
Economic theory suggests that an increase in the expected length of stay in a dwelling increases the probability of a household choosing to own a house rather than rent. This hypothesis is derived from recognition that there are substantial transaction costs associated with homeownership and increased expected time in the home reduces the annualized transaction cost. Using a military data set, we confirm that expected length of stay in a dwelling and the transaction costs of selling are very important to the ownership decision. Our best estimate of the transaction costs of selling a home are the sum of 3% of house value and 4% of household earnings.
The Czech Republic is facing a population ageing phenomenon. In addition, its demographic structure is expected to change dramatically over the next 50 years. We apply a stylised overlapping generation model in order to analyse the potential effects of the expected demographic changes on aggregate economic performance taking into account alternative fiscal policy set-ups. We provide a rough estimate of the amendments necessary on the revenue and expenditure sides in order to keep the current system financially balanced. We also discuss the implications for the development of other economic variables. In particular, we separately simulate future developments in the cases of adjustment in either the contribution rate or the value of public benefit. In addition, we demonstrate that parametric changes, such as an increase in the statutory retirement age, cannot eliminate the impact of the deterioration in the demographic structure on the course of the economy.
This paper examines the effects of intergenerational transfers on saving behavior by examining private wealth transfers targeted toward first-time home purchases. The study of transfer behavior in the housing market is advantageous for a number of reasons: the down payment requirement associated with home purchase can be thought of as an important, well-defined borrowing constraint that most U.S. households face; private wealth transfers targeted to home purchases are significant; and home equity is a highly important component of household wealth in the United States. The empirical analysis shows that transfer recipients have a saving rate that is lower than that of non-recipients by as much as 6 percentage points, representing a reduction of 39 to 49 percent in the household saving rate. In addition, households that receive transfers reduce the time required to save for the down payment by 22 percent. For each dollar of transfer received, households increase the dollar amount of the down payment by about 85 cents, allowing them to achieve a higher down payment threshold. Households also increase the value of the home purchased upon receiving a transfer, but by an amount that is much lower than would be possible if the transfer were fully leveraged. The amount of the transfer appears to be targeted to help households achieve certain down payment thresholds that give favorable terms on mortgages. Although the evidence suggests that the availability of a transfer reduces household savings, we cannot reject the alternative hypothesis that transfer recipients are inherently low savers.
Purchase of a house requires three interrelated household financial decisions: what level of debt to obtain, whether to select an adjustable or fixed rate mortgage (ARM or FRM), and whether to choose an FHA or a conventional loan. While some have analyzed the mortgage debt decision and the ARM/FRM choice, virtually no one has studied the FHA/conventional mortgage choice or the interrelation among the mortgage debt and instrument decisions. In our sample of 819 young home purchasers, debt and mortgage choice is driven by a need to finesse the downpayment and monthly payment constraint ratios and to lower mortgage insurance costs.
The paper analyses the effect of equity-price shocks on current account positions for the G-7 industrialized countries during 1974–2007. It uses a Bayesian vector autoregression with sign restrictions for the identification of equity-price shocks and to test empirically for their effect on current accounts. Such shocks are found to exert a sizable effect, with a 10 percent equity price increase, for example, in the United States relative to the rest of the world, worsening the U.S. trade balance by 0.9 percentage points after 16 quarters. However, the response of the trade balance to equity-price shocks varies substantially across countries. The evidence suggests that the channels accounting for this heterogeneity function both through wealth effects on private consumption and to some extent through the real exchange rate of countries. IMF Staff Papers (2009) 56, 633–654. doi:10.1057/imfsp.2009.8; published online 26 May 2009
Housing tenure choice is usually assumed to depend on relative tenure specific user costs, controlling for the household′s lifetime income. These models assume perfect capital markets. However, there is substantial evidence that potential first-time homebuyers face significant borrowing constraints. This paper proposes a tenure choice model, based on tenure transition theory principles, that recognizes the existence of both exogenous and endogenous liquidity constraints. It predicts that tenure choice depends centrally on a household′s liquefiable wealth, controlling for the asset price of housing. This prediction is tested using household survey data from both the United States and Canada.
A vast and often confusing economics literature relates competition to investment in innovation. Following Joseph Schumpeter, one view is that monopoly and large scale promote investment in research and development by allowing a firm to capture a larger fraction of its benefits and by providing a more stable platform for a firm to invest in R&D. Others argue that competition promotes innovation by increasing the cost to a firm that fails to innovate. This lecture surveys the literature at a level that is appropriate for an advanced undergraduate or graduate class and attempts to identify primary determinants of investment in R&D. Key issues are the extent of competition in product markets and in R&D, the degree of protection from imitators, and the dynamics of R&D competition. Competition in the product market using existing technologies increases the incentive to invest in R&D for inventions that are protected from imitators (e.g., by strong patent rights). Competition in R&D can speed the arrival of innovations. Without exclusive rights to an innovation, competition in the product market can reduce incentives to invest in R&D by reducing each innovator's payoff. There are many complications. Under some circumstances, a firm with market power has an incentive and ability to preempt rivals, and the dynamics of innovation competition can make it unprofitable for others to catch up to a firm that is ahead in an innovation race.
The impact of consumption-based, fundamental Federal tax reform on the housing market has been a controversial and difficult topic. We employ a dynamic, numerical simulation model of the aggregate housing market to augment our understanding of the key forces at work in the short-run and over longer periods. This approach suggests that integrating the short-run and long-term impacts of tax reform leads to the possibility that there will be relatively modest impacts on the nominal values of existing housing. The results indicate that an important topic for future research is the elasticity of housing supply in the short run and long run.
Qualification standards in the main home mortgage insurance program administered by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) are less stringent than the standards set by conventional lenders. However, households that qualify only for FHA financing of a modestly priced home in a given year are a narrow financial stratum of the population. The paper uses data from two longitudinal surveys to document that membership in that stratum changes frequently. Most of the “FHA only” qualifiers graduate to conventional qualification within a few years. The study also shows that most renters wait years to purchase once they have first qualified. The paper concludes that, to the extent that FHA has any influence on home ownership, it is mostly to accelerate home purchase, not to enable it among households that otherwise would never be able to buy.
The paper models the transition rates between the three main housing tenures in Britain. “Surprises” like partnership break-up, acquisition of a partner, and spells of unemployment are found to have large impacts on tenure changes. Through their effects on these transition rates, variation in the rate of arrival of such surprises affects the “equilbrium” housing tenure distribution of people. The transition rate models are estimated using two sources of longitudinal data: the first four waves of the British Household Panel Study (1991–1994) and data for the 1958 birth cohort from the National Child Development Study, covering their housing experiences from the ages of 16–33.
This study extends economic models of the joint decisions of living arrangement and home ownership. The cost of shelter is an important factor in determining whether youth live independently (apart from parents and other non-related adults), and the cost of home ownership relative to renting is important to the tenure decision (choice of owning or renting). Simulations suggest that the post-1985 decline and eventual removal of the Australian subsidy for first-time home owners has lowered the home ownership rate among young households by 23 per cent, the equivalent of slowing the time to first ownership by two years.
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Affordability and the Value of Creative Finance: An Application to Seller Financed Transactions
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Comment on Taxes, Mortgage Borrowing, and Residential Land Prices
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60604 or phh3939@gmail.com. Martin Hoesli
- Donald R Haurin
Donald R. Haurin, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210 or haurin.2@osu.edu.
Patric H. Hendershott, DePaul University, Chicago, IL 60604 or phh3939@gmail.com.
Martin Hoesli, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland CH-1211 or martin.hoesli@
unige.ch.