Rental Housing Research Articles

Housing ownership constraint and spatial sorting

The paper proposes a new theoretical explanation for the spatial sorting that the skill distribution has fatter tails in big cities. The ownership of the house make people face the constraint of house’s minimum area when purchasing it, therefore, and finally induces the spatial sorting. The new theory could distinguish buying and renting houses, and identify public services attached to housing ownership and enjoyed by all people no matter who buy or rent houses. The policy implications are also different from those in previous theories: when land supply is reduced in big cities, it predicted a decrease in the number of low-skilled workers in previous theories, whereas it predicts an increase in the theory of housing ownership constraints. In big cities, public services attached to housing ownership would attract more high-skilled workers and decrease low-skilled workers, while public services enjoyed by all people would attract both of them.

The state house prices make: the political elasticities of house prices and rents

ABSTARCT Fiscal policy allocation is not purely determined by the labour-capital conflict, but increasingly around cross-class housing coalitions. Although rising house prices are conventionally understood as drivers of fiscal austerity, this view has been challenged. Alternatively, governments may use fiscal policies to support house price growth to meet the primary economic interests of homeowners and compensate non-homeowners through the welfare system. Using an econometric analysis of 19 advanced economies between 1980 and 2018, we show house prices have positive effects on taxation revenue as well as fiscal spending on public investment, welfare and education. A second multi-level analysis provides a political explanation of this observed outcome by demonstrating parties respond to rising house prices by proposing more welfare and public investment spending in their manifestos. Conterminously rising house prices and rents also lead to greater welfare spending, suggesting governments use fiscal policy to protect those excluded from homeownership from labour market risks.

A Study of the Prospects and Challenges of India's Government Social Rental Housing

This research explores into the complex world of social rental housing schemes run by the Indian government, looking at its prospective & challenges. It is the responsibility of the government to provide "housing for all," as this is a right incorporated in the Constitutional Directive Principles of State Policy. Social rental housing is a subset of rental housing that aims to include more people. In response, the government of India has launched several social rental housing initiatives to make affordable, good housing available to everybody. Essential components in reducing housing disparity, it assesses how well these programs foster social inclusion & sustainable urban development. Until recently, the topic of rental housing in India was mostly ignored. With the fact that there are 21.72 million urban rented houses, no legislative framework has been put in place to encourage private sector involvement in this crucial subset of housing, even though the country has been independent for 72 years.

Spatial Analysis of Rental Housing Affordability for Low- and Middle-Income Households in Istanbul

Spatial Analysis of Rental Housing Affordability for Low- and Middle-Income Households in Istanbul

WEB BASED APPLICATION FOR BOARDING HOUSE SERVICE IN EKASAKTI UNIVERSITY AREA

A boarding house is one of the accommodation service providers or temporary residences consisting of several rooms, each room has facilities that have been provided by the owner of the boarding house. Searching for student boarding houses takes quite a long time and costs more to find a boarding house that suits your needs. To find information on boarding houses, students usually visit boarding houses between houses, ask local people who are close to the campus, walk around the campus and read advertisements in the mass media. The system development method used in making this final project uses the SDLC waterfall which consists of Planning, Analysis, Design and Implementation, with UML design tools consisting of Usecase Diagrams, Class Diagrams, Activity Diagrams and Sequence diagrams. In making this information system the author uses the PHP programming language, with MySQL database. This research produces a boarding house service application that can make it easier for students to search for and rent boarding houses in the Ekasakti University area. By using this information system, it is hoped that students will be helped in searching for boarding houses, because there are boarding house locations connected to Google Maps in the information system and students can make rentals, without having to directly meet the owner to make transactions, as well as several other menus. Web-based boarding house service application, which can solve the problem of difficulties for students in finding temporary housing such as boarding houses, using the SDLC development method, PHP programming language and MySQL database.

중국 1인 거주자의 생활환경을 고려한 스마트 정수기 디자인에 관한 연구 - 사용자 경험의 심층 분석을 중심으로

This study explores the design of intelligent water dispensers for young rental housing groups to meet their needs for convenience, instant water supply, and energy efficiency. With the acceleration of urbanization and the increase in youth mobility, traditional drinking water solutions can no longer fully meet the needs of this group. Through literature research, questionnaire surveys, and user and expert interviews, this article comprehensively analyzes the market demand, user preferences, and user experience of smart water dispensers. Research has found that young users prefer smart water dispensers that are hot, energy-efficient, and easy to operate, while also having high expectations for product appearance design and technological innovation. Based on the research results, this article proposes a user centered design strategy, aiming to improve user experience and enhance product market competitiveness by optimizing the design elements of intelligent water dispensers at the instinctive, behavioral, and reflective levels. This study provides theoretical support and practical guidance for the product innovation and market strategy of intelligent water dispensers.

Renovation of Collective Rental Housing in Shenzhen's Urban Villages: Model, Resident Satisfaction, and Implications-A Case Study of Yuanfen New Village in Shenzhen City

Renovation of Collective Rental Housing in Shenzhen's Urban Villages: Model, Resident Satisfaction, and Implications-A Case Study of Yuanfen New Village in Shenzhen City

‘Generation Share’ versus ‘Generation Rent’: Analysing the spatial preferences of shared rental housing

A growing number of young adults are choosing to live in private rental housing and sharing with unknown individuals in order to reduce their housing expenses. However, young housing sharers are generally treated as homogeneous to other renters in academic research and policy formation, leaving some of their unique housing issues unaddressed. This study examines how young housing sharers differ from their counterparts living in conventional or unshared rental housing. More specifically, we compare the spatial preferences of housing sharers to the spatial preferences of conventional housing renters, using a unique dataset of over 0.8 million private rental housing records collected in Shanghai, China. The results using a revealed-preference approach based on a hedonic pricing model demonstrate significant differences in their preference for location characteristics. Housing sharers are more willing to pay for proximity to employment centres and metro stations than conventional housing renters. Following the outbreak of Covid-19, the difference has narrowed to some extent, and housing sharers have moved further from employment centres. Rather, housing sharers are less concerned about access to public and private service amenities. The findings of this study contribute to our understanding of the recent housing tenure shift toward sharing among the younger generation and its potential impact on age-related segmentation in the housing market.

Rental Housing Supply and Build-to-Rent Conundrum in Australia

Traditionally, rental housing has been supplied by a large pool of individual investors who own a few units and invest their savings, with some leverage, to take advantage of the tax regime in Australia. The last five years have seen the emergence of build-to-rent (BTR) units, which are supplied by investors who own a large number of units. The state of Victoria in Australia has the largest share of these projects. In the current market and regulatory environment, the financial viability of BTR projects is low for investors and hinges on the ability of units to be leased at higher than market rents. This paper examines four groups of levers, including those already being pursued by the building industry, that can be used to improve the financial viability of BTRs. These include: (i) revenue maximization, (ii) cost reduction (iii) fiscal and (iv) planning incentives. An archetypical BTR project which mimics current practice is considered, assumed to be in Docklands, Victoria, where several BTR projects are planned. For the robustness check, a feasibility analysis is conducted for a site in North Melbourne, a neighbourhood in Victoria with several BTR projects. The results indicate that for revenue maximization, the mix of unit types in a BTR project should be location-specific, as market preferences (and the characteristics of renters) determine the rent for different types of units that can be achieved. In a conventional BTR project development, where land is bought upfront and the project is developed, the mixed-use BTR (residential in combination with commercial) does not provide significant financial benefits though including small retail (3–4% of the net lettable area) may provide complementary benefits. Incurring large capital costs upfront and having the revenue stream spread over long periods reduces financial viability. While construction costs are more difficult to reduce, ways to reduce land costs could be through zoning land for BTR use, through mechanisms such as joint ventures with landowners, and land leasing. Exemptions on income, land tax, and rates (like CHPs) can result in a higher return for investors. A full GST refund, an incentive that industry is lobbying for, results in a similar IRR as an exemption on income, land tax and rates would offer. These results will assist in determining priorities for policies that are aimed at BTR.

Making housing affordable? The local effects of relaxing land-use regulation

This paper examines the effects of relaxing land-use regulations on housing supply and rents at the local intra-city level. We apply a staggered difference-in-difference model, exploiting exogenous differences in the treatment timing of zoning plan reforms as identifying variation. Increasing the allowable floor-to-area ratio (FAR), i.e., upzoning, significantly increases the living space and housing units by approximately 9% in the subsequent five to ten years. This effect is stronger for larger upzonings, for rasters where zoning is binding, and where rents are high. Furthermore, upzoning leads to no difference in hedonic rents between upzoned and later-upzoned rasters. These results show that upzoning is a viable policy for increasing housing affordability. However, the effects depend on the upzoning policy design and take several years to materialize.

Resisting Eviction: Domicide and the Financialization of Rental Housing by Andrew Crosby. Fernwood Publishing Co. Ltd., 2023.

Resisting Eviction: Domicide and the Financialization of Rental Housing by Andrew Crosby. Fernwood Publishing Co. Ltd., 2023.

Correction: ‘No Pet’ Covenants and the Law: A Harm Assessment Approach to Regulating Companion Animals in Rental Housing Across the World

Correction: ‘No Pet’ Covenants and the Law: A Harm Assessment Approach to Regulating Companion Animals in Rental Housing Across the World

Introduction to the Special Issue: New Perspectives on Public and Social Rental Housing in the Nordic Countries, part two

Introduction to the Special Issue: New Perspectives on Public and Social Rental Housing in the Nordic Countries, part two

Determinants of housing demands and residential rent costs in an emerging city in Southern Nigeria

Housing is vital to human experience. It is the basis and foci of daily activities. In Asaba, a strategically located, fast-growing metropolis, city officials are confronted by myriads of urban planning issues, one of which is provision of urban housing. This study attempted to identify the determinants of housing demands and costs of residential rents within the city (Asaba). In this study, the ex-post facto and survey designs were deployed. The data for the study comprised of the primary (questionnaire data) and secondary (historical housing data) types. For effective questionnaire administration, the study area was stratified into high, medium and low income areas. The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient were deployed for data analyses. The results indicated that the key determinants of residential housing demand and costs were ease of access to public transport (69 %), nearness to security formations (80 %) and higher demand for houses in supply (75.8 %); and the Spearman's rank correlation showed that these factors were significant at P < 0.05. Other factors such as availability of electricity and access to water supply were not significant determinants of choice of housing at P > 0.05. This is due to the fact that the whole region lacks adequate electricity supply and water is self-harnessed through boreholes. ANOVA showed that there was a significant temporal variation in the cost of residential housing rents at p<0.05 (F-69.03; sig 0.000). Consequently, this study recommends that there is need for the decentralisation of the city; which should be realised by an efficient development of the suburbs to high standards that would meet the requirements of prospective renters. Policy development and establishment of basic facilities in the suburbs, would help actualise this decentralization. Also, collaboration between government and private developers could yield more supply in the housing stuck, consequently reducing costs of housing.

Rental housing types and economic wellbeing in Canada

The aim of this article is to examine the association between different types of rental housing and household economic wellbeing. Its main objective is to better understand how the different types of assistance promoted by housing policies contribute to the reduction of material hardship among renter households. To achieve this objective, the study is based on the creation of an original typology designed to catch the different models of social and non-market housing that characterize the rental housing system in Canada. The research design it adopts controls for compositional effects linked to housing policy through a matching procedure that reduces the imbalance existing between households residing in social housing and the rest of the population. The analyses produced demonstrate the importance of promoting and maintaining social and non-market housing models that favour rent-geared-to-income housing, guarantee long-term affordability, and value public and co-operative tenure models.

Geospatial modelling of housing rents from TOD using MGWR and implications on integrated transportation-land use planning

Revealing the effect of transit-oriented development (TOD) on housing rents is critical for supporting transportation financing and sustainable urban development. However, existing research has not thoroughly examined the effects of land use type and TOD type on housing rents, crucially lacking geospatial modelling. This study investigates the spatial effect of TOD on housing rents using multi-scale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) and the relationship of land use type and TOD type to this effect. The results show that MGWR accurately quantifies the spatial effect. Meanwhile, the important TOD variables (integrated transit index, land use entropy, overall walkability) have positive effects on housing rents, which show spatial heterogeneity. Moreover, the premium effect of TOD station areas with a smaller proportion of residential and commercial land and a larger proportion of educational and cultural facilities is higher. Furthermore, in TOD station areas where transportation supply capacity is high but urban development is lagging, land use entropy and overall walkability have a strong influence on housing rents. Based on the study's results, we offer three recommendations for implementing TOD practices into integrated transportation and land use planning. This study renews our understanding of the outcomes of TOD both perspectively and methodologically.

INCENTIVIZING LANDLORD ENGAGEMENT IN A CLEAN ENERGY TRANSITION IN NOVA SCOTIA, CANADA: A CASE STUDY OF ENERGIZE BRIDGEWATER

ABSTRACT Split incentives, in which the costs and benefits of energy efficiency upgrades are unevenly felt between landlords and tenants, are a powerful barrier that prevents retrofits from taking place. The problem is clearly playing out across the low-income, and inefficient homes of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada, where greenhouse emissions are high, and a large proportion of residents are burdened by energy poverty. To help solve the problem and facilitate home energy efficiency renovations, a project called Energize Bridgewater was developed. Guided by 10 semi-structured interviews with Energize Bridgewater team members (n = 4) and property managers (n = 6), we present a case study which sought to contextualize and better understand how Energize Bridgewater may incentivize owners of rental houses to participate in this clean energy transition. Our results focus on three main findings: i) the reality of the split incentive problem in Bridgewater; ii) barriers to landlord engagement; and iii) reactions to proposed programming. We close this paper with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of our work, including a set of recommendations for Energize Bridgewater and similar projects facing the split incentive problem while working toward a clean and cost-effective energy transition.

Supplementary rental supply? The digital market for low-cost and informal housing in Sydney, Australia

This article examines real estate platforms and the data they generate to provide new insights into housing markets and practices, focusing on lower-cost and informal sectors, where building or rental regulations are often bypassed or contravened. We examine online listings advertised in Sydney, one of the most expensive cities in Australia and the world, compiling data from four dominant platforms – Realestate.com.au, Flatmates.com.au, Gumtree.com.au and Airbnb.com – each of which offers a particular type of rental accommodation. Using these datasets, we identify a typology of lower-cost and informal tenures and dwelling units, ranging from secondary dwellings and illegally subdivided apartments to shared accommodation and precarious rental agreements. Our study highlights a supplementary supply of rental housing, operating within the conventional private rental market, accessed and made visible via the platforms we examine. Applying a statistical regression approach, we examine relationships between concentrations of informal housing supply and socio-economic variables. The findings reveal intersections between digital platforms and evolving informal market practices and have implications for urban planning and housing policy.

Determinants of food insecurity among adults residing in peri-urban municipal settings in Flanders, Belgium

Food insecurity is a global public health issue associated with noncommunicable diseases. Individual factors are strongly associated with food insecurity, but there is limited literature on the broader impact of both the social and food environments on food insecurity in non-English speaking European countries, given that the research was predominantly conducted in Anglophone settings. In addition, these studies have mostly been conducted in urban areas. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the main determinants of food insecurity among adults living in peri-urban areas in Flanders, Belgium. Data on socio-demographics, neighborhood social cohesion, social isolation, and perceived food environments were collected from 567 adults through a self-administered questionnaire, and objective data on the food environment were obtained through (commercial) databases on food outlets. Food insecurity was measured using the USDA Household Food Security Survey Module. Multivariable logistic regression models revealed that lower socioeconomic status (OR14.11,95%CI:4.72;61.11), reasonable (OR4.16,95%CI: 2.11;8.47) to poor and very poor (OR6.54,95%CI: 2.11;8.47) subjective health status, and living in private (OR7.01, 95% CI:3.0;17.0) or government-assisted (OR6.32,95%CI: 3.13;13.26) rental housing significantly increased the odds of food insecurity. Additionally, residing in a neighborhood with low (OR2.64, 95% CI:1.13;6.26) to medium (OR2.45,95% CI:1.21;5.11) social cohesion, having a neutral opinion (OR4.12,95%CI:1.51;11.54) about the availability of fruit and vegetables in one's neighborhood, and having an opinion that fruit and vegetable prices are too expensive (OR5.43,95% CI 2.26;14.4) significantly increased the odds of experiencing food insecurity. This study underscores the need for policies that consider factors related to social and food environments, in addition to individual factors, to effectively address food insecurity.

Proptech and the private rental sector: New forms of extraction at the intersection of rental properties and platform rentierisation

Private renting increasingly comprises a complex ecosystem of actors who assemble housing within the market, and collect rental income and data from tenants, and data on the material assets themselves. Our analysis – at the intersection of rentier and platform capitalism – focuses on landed (material real estate) and technological (digital infrastructure and data) property in Australia’s private rental system. Drawing out relationships between the various actors – landlords, rental property managers and real estate agencies, software developers and providers, property developers and investors – and both their properties and their uses of Proptech (property technology), we show how housing and technology are being leveraged for profit in new ways. In Australia, landed property retains its precedence for established (individual and institutional) landlords, whose interest in Proptech relates to enhancing or value-adding to rental housing assets. For Proptech and institutional real estate players seeking to consolidate both landed and technology property, capturing the tech landscape is increasingly important; indeed, securing control and/or consolidation of technology property is a key motivation for building and/or using Proptech among the largest property developers. Our findings show how rent extraction operates across and between different types and scales of property and market actors, and in new ways that differentiate the figure of the rentier while upholding the dynamics of the rentier model.