Rental Housing Market Research Articles

Modelling Housing Rents Using Spatial Autoregressive Geographically Weighted Regression: A Case Study in Cracow, Poland

The proportion of tenants will undoubtedly rise in Poland, where at present, the ownership housing model is very dominant. As a result, the rental housing market in Poland is currently under-researched in comparison with owner-occupancy. In order to narrow this research gap, this study attempts to identify the determinants affecting rental prices in Cracow. The latter were obtained from the internet platform otodom.pl using the web scraping technique. To identify rent determinants, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and spatial econometric methods were used. In particular, traditional spatial autoregressive model (SAR) and spatial autoregressive geographically weighted regression (GWR-SAR) were employed, which made it possible to take into account the spatial heterogeneity of the parameters of determinants and the spatially changing spatial autocorrelation of housing rents. In-depth analysis of rent determinants using the GWR-SAR model exposed the complexity of the rental market in Cracow. Estimates of the above model revealed that many local markets can be identified in Cracow, with different factors shaping housing rents. However, one can identify some determinants that are ubiquitous for almost the entire city. This concerns mainly the variables describing the area of the flat and the age of the building. Moreover, the Monte Carlo test indicated that the spatial autoregressive parameter also changes significantly over space.

Ethnic Discrimination Against Landlords in the Rental Housing Market

In this paper, we examine ethnic discrimination against landlords by analyzing whether Arab (minority) landlords receive fewer inquiries than Jewish (non-minority) landlords for available apartments for rent. Two hundred and forty-eight fictitious advertisements for apartments for rent were advertised, half with names signaling Jewish individuals and half with names signaling Arab individuals. Moreover, the amount of information regarding the apartments was varied, as half of the advertisements included pictures and a longer description of the apartments, decreasing the uncertainty regarding potential landlords. Finally, through contact-sharing smartphone applications, we examine the ethnicity of the individuals calling each type of advertisement. The main finding is that Jewish landlords receive 36 percent more inquiries overall than Arab landlords, from 29 percent more unique phone numbers than Arab landlords. This finding holds for both high-information and low-information listings. In addition, we find that the more left-leaning a city is politically, the smaller the difference in inquiries between the two types of landlords. Finally, we find that the difference in inquiries received is driven by non-Arab (Jewish) potential tenants.

The Impact of Migration on a Regulated Rental Market

Throughout the 20th century, the Swedish rental market has generally been heavily regulated, with both a rental queue in place, as well as generally fixed rents, with limited ability to vary these. Though these systems remain in place, in the 21st century, a number of deregulatory measures have been taken. Meanwhile, evolving migration flows and strong humanitarian migration in particular have continued. These developments combined mean that now more than ever, impacts of migration on the rental housing market are increasingly likely. This paper investigates the relationship between foreign-born and internal migration and rents on the housing market. Findings suggest that foreign-born migration, and refugees in particular, impact rents, especially in major cities.

Analysing the Differentiation of Housing Price Influence Based on PCA Clustering-Entropy Weight Method: A Case Study in Sichuan

The immobility of real estate products and the regional nature of the consumption of real estate products make the real estate industry have obvious regional characteristics. The current policy adjustments in the real estate market emphasize differentiation, that is, the regulation methods of each city are becoming more and more different, not only because of the policy of the city, but also the policy of the district. For exploring the basis of differential regulation, the article takes Sichuan Province of China as an example. Through the selection of four first-level indicators and thirteen secondary indicators, 21 cities (districts) are divided into four types of areas. Then the entropy method is used to obtain the factors that affect the housing prices in each category. Based on these, it is suggested to improve the real estate market related policies from the three aspects: promoting the construction of the housing rental market, guiding the rational expectations of buyers and correctly guiding the flow of people.

Different samples, different results? How sampling techniques affect the results of field experiments on ethnic discrimination

This paper explores a possible sampling bias in field experiments through a unique combination of a large-scale field experiment on ethnic discrimination in the German rental housing market (N = 2,992 tested apartments) and data on the internet housing market where the apartments were sampled from (observation of the whole platform for about one year). Up to now, most field experiments sampled on the level of suppliers (not apartments) and selected the tested suppliers within a short field period (point sampling). This probably led to an over-representation of small suppliers and apartments that had already been advertised for a long time, resulting in an under-representation of large suppliers and new vacancies. We analyze how both issues affect the measurement of ethnic discrimination and its underlying mechanisms. With our case study on the German housing market, we first observed the expected sampling bias: There was a strong over-sampling of small suppliers and apartments already offered for a long time. Second, this bias was found to have only little impact on the descriptive result of substantial discrimination against Turkish applicants. There was only a slight tendency that discrimination was higher for small suppliers and offers advertised for a relatively short time (i.e. new vacancies). Overall, we conclude that evidence on ethnic discrimination and its underlying risk factors is remarkably robust to the used sampling technique. Although there were no indications of a severe bias, our market data illustrate opportunities to test the effects of market conditions that often remained unnoticed.

Investigating the factors affecting the residential satisfaction of new-generation migrants: a case study of Hangzhou in China

ABSTRACT This paper examines the residential satisfaction of new-generation migrants in the Chinese context. The study uses the survey data of residential satisfaction of new-generation migrants in Hangzhou. The ordered logit model is employed to examine the factors affecting the residential satisfaction of new-generation migrants, a special group of the workforce in metropolitan cities of China. Unlike the previous studies of residential satisfaction of rural migrant workers in Chinese cities, we find that the residential satisfaction of new-generation migrants does follow the standard patterns identified in the literature; the socio-demographic attributes such as gender, education, income, housing characteristics of size and the quality of kitchen and sanitary facilities and neighbourhood environment and location factors such as the distance to work place, accessibility to employment and other location and the availability of entertaining amenities are significant determinants of residential satisfaction of new-generation migrants. Additionally, the institutional factors such as tenancy agreement signed with landlord and lease length, which provides tenants with residential stability and security have a significant impact on residential satisfaction. This finding has policy implication of regulating the growing rental housing market in China. This finding also complements the existing research on residential satisfaction. Highlights This is the first paper to analyze the residential satisfaction of new-generation migrants living in a rented dwelling in China. The analysis finds the factors affecting the residential satisfaction of new-generation migrants are different from the ones affecting rural-to-urban migrants. The factors affecting the residential satisfaction of new-generation migrants are socio-demographic attributes, housing characteristics and locational attributes. The findings have policy implication for the government and a developer to provide a satisfying dwelling to retain young talents in the city they choose to live and work.

Moving towards a Smarter Housing Market: The Example of Poland

Cities are currently undergoing vast changes, which have very significant implications for the functioning of the housing market. In particular, it should be stated that the traditional residential market, in imitation of the smart city concept, is becoming increasingly smarter. This smartness can be expressed in four dimensions: the “automatic” rental housing market; innovative digital platforms in the traditional housing market; innovative policies and housing models; and the ability to forecast demand on the housing market, which together form the so-called smart housing concept. On this basis, this study attempted to assess empirically the smartness of the residential markets in Polish provincial capitals. Firstly, after a thorough analysis of digital housing portals, official websites of Polish provincial capitals and public statistics data, the smart housing concept was operationalised in all its dimensions by defining appropriate indicators measuring its level in a given city. Then, using the zero unitarization and entropy weight methods, followed by a no-pattern synthetic measure, a comprehensive smart housing index was obtained for each city investigated. Research results showed that there is a large degree of variation in the level of smartness of the housing markets in the examined cities. Furthermore, the analysis also indicates that the economic dimension of the smart city concept and the co-working concept are the main driving forces behind the development of smart residential markets. In addition, the study reveals that the implementation of the smart housing concept has a positive impact on the quality of life of city inhabitants.

Urbanization in Kazakhstan: desirable cities, unaffordable housing, and the missing rental market

ABSTRACT Kazakhstan’s cities are hubs of economic opportunity and prosperity. But despite the Government’s ambitious targets, the pace of urbanization remains slow. This study focuses on two key constraints: (i) the very high cost-of-living in Kazakhstan’s cities, and (ii) the near absence of a rental housing market outside of the capital, Nur-Sultan. The findings show that the two urban centres of Almaty and Nur-Sultan are 190% and 240% more expensive to live in than the national average. Housing is the primary driver of the disparity: after adjusting for inflation, housing costs tripled in Nur-Sultan and quadrupled in Almaty between 2001 and 2015. As a result, housing costs for the local population in these areas are more unaffordable than famously exclusive cities such as San Francisco and Vancouver. Demand elasticities imply that rural and low-income households are especially unlikely to relocate to high-priced areas where employment prospects are better and average incomes are higher. Regional convergence in wage rates remains slow but appears to be proceeding most quickly in Nur-Sultan, where rental housing is most prevalent. The findings suggest that high rates of home ownership and the high cost-of-living in cities lead to exclusion of lower-income households and restrains economic growth. Highlights Urbanization in Kazakhstan is proceeding very slowly, despite ambitious government targets. The high cost-of-living in the urban areas of Nur-Sultan and Almaty deters many potential domestic migrants. This is driven almost entirely by housing costs: housing in high-demand cities is seriously unaffordable for most people, even among those already living in cities. High home ownership rates and an abnormally small rental market further reduce domestic mobility.

Licensing and the Informal Sector in Rental Housing Markets: Theory and Evidence

Although the goal of licensing is to ensure the quality of services, it can also induce firms to operate informally or exit altogether. This paper examines licensing in the rental housing market by developing a model that indicates licensing's impact on the size of the underground rental market, the number of vacancies, and homelessness are ambiguous. As a result, we calibrate the model using a unique dataset from Baltimore, which allows us to directly observe underground rentals and vacancies. Our calibrations show that licensing may have a modest impact on rents, while increasing quality more substantially.

Consequences of the pandemic and new development opportunities for Polish cities in the (post-)COVID-19 era

Relevance. The coronavirus pandemic has become the most unexpected global phenomenon in 2020, with a number of equally unexpected consequences. The explosive spread of Covid-19 is mostly perceived the negative light, especially in the context of the threat it posed to the health and lives of millions of people. However, it has been noticed that as a result of the pandemic and lockdown, some negative socio-economic processes have been slowed down. Thus, some of the consequences of the pandemic and lockdown can be perceived as new development opportunities. Research objective. This article aims to describe the new phenomena and processes caused by the pandemic in Polish cities which may have a positive impact on urban development. We also intend to indicate potential directions and development opportunities in cities as a result of the pandemic experience. Data and methods. Methodologically, the work combines two main research methods. First, we analysed the research literature and materials of selected Polish and foreign media dealing with the pandemic and its impact on cities, especially in the spatial and social dimensions. Then we considered the available quantitative data describing the current epidemiological situation in Polish regions. Results and conclusions. Research on the development of Covid-19 in Polish cities is difficult because the official data published daily are aggregated only on the regional level. We have found the following consequences of the pandemic that can be considered as positive: relief from overtourism and speculation on the housing rental market, revival of urban nature, revival of the importance of local and regional identity and goods and resurgence of human solidarity and support for entrepreneurs. The development potential of cities in the post-Covid-19 era should be considered in the context of the following dilemmas and concepts: densification vs. disaggregation, concept of a 15-minute city, city as a system and the need for a participatory urban policy.

Факторы привлекательности регионов России для мигрантов с высшим образованием

Attracting and preserving human capital is one of the key tasks of regional development. It is believed that only Moscow successfully solves it. But in times of crisis, Moscow’s share of the number of migrants arriving decreases, including due to a drop in the ratio of income to the cost of living in the capital. As a result of the pandemic and expanding opportunities for remote work, some professionals will think about moving to less densely populated, but comfortable cities. We study the factors that contribute to the attraction of highly qualified personnel. Econometric calculations have confirmed the importance of the presence or proximity of a large labor market, a high quality of life, a favor- able institutional environment, and comfortable bioclimatic conditions. Based on the identified factors, an index of attractiveness of regions is proposed; Among the leaders in 2018: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Moscow Region, Tatarstan, Krasnodar Territory, Samara, Voronezh Regions. In the top 10 regions in 2011-2018. accounted for more than 40% of all attracted highly qualified personnel. Regions that will be able to attract professionals in the post-crisis period to develop digital technologies and related knowledge-intensive sectors of the economy will benefit in the long run. This will require measures to develop the rental housing market, improve the urban environment, and create favorable conditions for entrepreneurs and investors.

Hort-term Rentals, Housing Markets and COVID-19: Theoretical Considerations and Empirical Evidence from Four Austrian Cities

Prior to the onset of the pandemic, evidence on the conversion of regular rental housing into permanent holiday homes has fuelled concerns that Airbnb and other short-term rentals contribute to the shortage of affordable homes and to the displacement of regular residents in cities with high housing demand. When the pandemic set in, the media was quick to speculate that holiday homes would be returned to the regular rental market. This paper provides some theoretical reflections on the factors that are driving and impeding such a development and presents preliminary results from an ongoing research project that empirically traces the impacts of COVID-19 on the rental housing market based on an analysis of real estate listings in four large Austrian cities. We argue that a current shift to the regular rental market is likely, but that the medium- and long-term development is uncertain. Empirically, we demonstrate that such a shift has occurred in all four cities considered. We do not find evidence, however, that the increased rental housing supply has dampened rent levels.

The Road to Integration: Post-Migration Experience and Migrant Housing Behavior in Singapore

This study investigates the impact of migrants’ post-migration experiences on their integration and housing behaviors. Collaborating with a local town council, we surveyed 1,128 households living in Singapore public housing estates and constructed instrumental variables to resolve identification problems. Two sets of empirical findings are established. First, migrants with more extended periods of post-migration residency demonstrate higher integration levels, both spatially and socially. With 1 more year of residency, migrant renters select housing in areas up to 3.01% farther from their workplace, physically and spatially making a way into the host society. Migrant homeowners show stronger social integration than migrant renters, based on both subjective and objective social integration measures. Second, in the public open rental housing market, where migrants in their early post-migration years typically reside, migrant renters pay rents that are lower by up to 0.67% with 1 more year of post-migration residency. A further test shows that a more extended post-migration residency period increases a migrant’s housing search and bargaining power for lower rent due to integration. Our empirical evidence indicates the significance of early years’ post-migration experiences in shaping integration and the importance of integration policy in assisting new migrants.

The Game of Social Forces Participating in the Evolution of the Housing Rental Market and Government Regulation

There is a correlation between the price of rent and the supply and demand of housing leases. While the government promotes financial innovation in the leasing market, there are also loopholes in financial supervision, which causes social forces to excessively participate in the “profit-seeking” behavior of housing leasing projects, further resulting in rising rental prices. Finally, this makes the public cannot afford housing. Based on the evolution game theory, this paper analyzes the evolutionary path and mechanism of government and social forces in repeated games. The results show that it is difficult for social forces to evolve naturally to non-participation without external forces, and the government needs to implement appropriate regulations to make the system evolve toward the target state.

Examining the Impact of Short-Term Rentals on Housing Prices in Washington, DC: Implications for Housing Policy and Equity

ABSTRACTAs on-demand short-term rentals (STRs) grow popular with the rise of sharing platforms like Airbnb, regulations for the STR market have become the center of a debate among policymakers, housing interest groups, the hotel and lodging industry, and STR platforms. Washington, DC, the nation’s capital and one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United States, is on the front lines of legalizing and regulating the STR business. With the heated policy debate over whether STRs disrupt the rental housing market in DC, a concrete discussion about what STRs impose on the owner housing market is left out. Using web-scraped data from Airbnb and property-level data from the city, I investigated the net impact of STRs on single-family property prices through a series of hedonic analyses. The results suggest that having Airbnb establishments in the neighborhood can significantly inflate property prices. Because of the uneven spatial market penetration of STRs, such price impact could inequitably affect low-income homebuyers and add another hurdle to resolving the housing affordability issue faced by policymakers in Washington, DC.

Rent Control, Market Segmentation, and Misallocation: Causal Evidence from a Large-Scale Policy Intervention

This paper studies market segmentation that arises from the introduction of a price ceiling in the market for rental housing. When part of the market faces rent control, theory predicts an increase of free-market rents, a consequence of misallocation of households to housing units. We study a large-scale policy intervention in the German housing market in 2015 to document this mechanism empirically. To identify the effect we rely on temporal variation in treatment dates, combined with a difference-in-differences setup and a discontinuity-intime design. By taking a short-run perspective, we are able to isolate the misallocation mechanism from other types of spillovers. We find a robust positive effect on free-market rents in response to the introduction of rent control. Further, we document that rent control reduced the propensity to move house within rent controlled areas, but only among highincome households. Interpreted through the lens of our theoretical model, this spillover is a clear sign of misallocation. Further, we document that the spillover brings forward demolitions of old, ramshackle buildings.

Gentrification: causes and consequences for the regional housing market in Russia

Many researchers deal with the rental housing market in Russia. All of them consider organizational and economic mechanisms of its development. The present article discusses the need to study social aspects of the real estate market for its deeper understanding and formation of effective development mechanisms. Particular attention is paid to gentrification caused by changes in the economic and political situation and causing changes in the social structure which modify the residential real estate market and its individual segments. The article studies the nature of gentrification and its consequences. The article emphasizes the need for studying economic and social laws of the real estate market.

Impact of Disaster Risks on Rental Housing Market in Kanto Major Metropolitan Area

本研究では、関東大都市圏を対象とした賃貸住宅価格のヘドニック分析を通じ、災害リスク回避傾向と世帯の社会属性の関係及び災害リスク回避傾向の地域差について考察した。分析では、賃貸住宅の賃料・専有面積・立地する地域による市場区分に注目し、ヘドニック賃料関数の推定結果の区分間の違いを調べた。分析の結果、東京都では関東大都市圏の他の地域より地震リスク・浸水リスク・土砂災害リスクによる賃料下降効果が大きいという傾向が見られた。また、賃料の安い「低所得世帯向け住宅」では「高所得世帯向け住宅」に比べて地震リスク・浸水リスクによる賃料下降効果が小さく、東京駅に近接していることによる賃料上昇効果が大きいという傾向が見られた。これらの結果から、世帯の社会属性や居住地は人々の災害リスク回避傾向に対し一定の説明力を持っていることが示唆された。

德国住房租赁制度及其对我国住房租赁市场培育的启示

德国住房租赁制度及其对我国住房租赁市场培育的启示

Human rights on the altar of the market: the Blackstone letters and the financialisation of housing

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the recent exchange of letters between two UN human rights mandate-holders and the Blackstone Group LP, a private equity firm with significant investments in the rental housing market in multiple jurisdictions. The mandate-holders argue that Blackstone’s investments are causing serious harm to the right to housing, including retrogressing affordability, and increasing evictions, homelessness and housing-related poverty. The scale of investment displaces communities and reshapes the housing landscape for the next generation. Blackstone’s rebuttal was, in part, predicated on their subservience to market forces and their obeying the law in all jurisdictions. This is largely accurate, indicating that markets and their constitutive rules permit and incentivise retrogressive housing outcomes. The paper therefore argues that promoting socio-economic rights under financialised globalisation requires challenging the engrained norms of marketisation. International human rights law provides an entry point for this project.