Chain‐formation in the Owner‐Occupied Housing Market

Abstract

The paper examines the process by which owner-occupied housing market transactions take place. The objective is to develop a model which can reproduce the slow build-up of housing chains of connected owner-occupier sales and purchases. The approach here applies stringent discontinuous preferences over house type and location to develop a computer model which will produce these housing chains. The process derived demonstrates that existing owner-occupiers spend longer in housing market search than will first-time buyers or the sellers of new dwellings. The implication that existing owner-occupiers ‘lag’ in the housing market is tested on UK housing price data, with results that clearly support this general hypothesis.