To Buy or Not to Buy: Expanding the Rental Housing Market

Abstract

Home ownership may be a good choice for many people, but it is not necessarily the best for all (Apgar 2004). Renting may offer a better option for some families for whom home ownership may not be the right fit given their needs, lifestyle, or life cycle (Retsinas and Belsky 2002; UN-HABITAT 2003b). For this reason, a well-functioning rental housing market is a critical part of a sustainable, integral, and healthy housing system. Expanding the rental housing market in Latin America and the Caribbean could broaden the choice of housing options for households, injecting flexibility into housing markets to respond to the full spectrum of citizens’ housing needs and preferences. In addition, rental housing could provide policy alternatives for policymakers to tackle the quantitative and qualitative shortages affecting most countries in the region. An efficient rental housing market could also have a beneficial impact on the economies of the region, helping to alleviate the housing shortage, improve labor mobility and earnings potential, and reduce the macroeconomic risks borne by low-income families.KeywordsEuro AreaHome OwnershipRental HousingRental MarketCaribbean CountryThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.