Private Rental Housing Market Research Articles

Private rental housing market in Ethiopia: Aspirations and challenges

The private rental accommodation is a significant contributor to urban housing supply and is densely populated. Despite its prevalence, it has not received much attention in academic discussions. The rental housing market is like a double-edged sword, with both positive and negative aspects. Researchers have identified it as a problematic housing type that requires further investigation and intervention. A mixed research approach was employed to collect qualitative and quantitative data from 384 samples to understand the rental housing market better. The study found that the regulatory and interactional aspects of the private rental housing market have contributed to its problematic features. Although the market positively impacts housing shortages, private rental a source of unsuitable accommodation. To address these issues, the authors recommend regulatory and interactional dimensions of the private rental housing market be addressed through formal intervention and legislation.

Subjectification as an ideal tenant. Competing for housing in the Viennese private rental market

Despite its reputation as a ‘paradise for renters,’ housing seekers in Vienna also face increasing difficulties in finding affordable housing, especially in the private rental housing market. We examine how competitive housing search, application, and allocation shape the subjectivities of housing seekers. Drawing on interviews with landlords, real estate agents and housing seekers in the Viennese private rental market, we analyse the suggestions of subjectivity housing seekers face and how they appropriate—enact, negotiate, or contest—these subjectivities. The study shows that housing seekers must sense and enact an ideal tenant to increase their chances of successfully accessing housing. The various modes of subjectification clustered around this image of the ideal tenant—being solvent, caring for the apartment, not being a foreigner, and invoking a good ‘gut feeling’—show that increased competition not only makes access to affordable housing more difficult, but also has normative effects.

Perceptions of housing stability and fertility intentions among public housing renters in Guangzhou, China

In the context of declining fertility rates and worsening housing affordability for low-and moderate-income families, many scholars have paid closer attention to the effect of housing on the fertility preferences of vulnerable groups. However, existing studies on the association between housing and fertility are rooted in the private rental or buying housing market. The existing literature on the link between public rental housing sectors and fertility intentions has been surprisingly silent. Furthermore, despite the fact that previous studies have investigated how housing outcomes (housing conditions and housing tenure) reshape fertility intentions, to date, how fertility intentions are influenced by perceptions of housing situations is rarely examined, particularly perceptions of housing stability. More importantly, most previous literature estimating the effects of housing on fertility intentions has ignored the endogeneity issue between housing and fertility intentions, which may result in a biased estimate. Using 2022 public rental housing survey data in Guangzhou, we employ the instrumental variable approach to address the potential endogeneity issue of our equations and investigate whether perceptions of housing stability can encourage fertility intentions of public housing renters. The findings reveal that self-reported perceptions of housing stability are positively and significantly associated with the fertility intentions of public housing renters. Moreover, the housing stability effect is larger for the male and unmarried cohorts. These findings warrant policy consideration as to how public rental housing increases a sense of housing stability for tenants, thereby protecting and supporting their fundamental fertility rights.

An examination of the growth of Airbnb in New Zealand and its impact on the private rental housing market: 2016–2021

AbstractAirbnb is an online platform connecting private hosts with visitors looking for short‐term accommodation. The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of Airbnb on long‐term rental housing availability and cost in Aotearoa New Zealand before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Regional growth patterns in Airbnb properties were measured and their impact on the private rental market investigated. An increasing proportion of new rental housing was offered through Airbnb over the study period, particularly in popular tourist locations. Increasing occupancy rates pre‐pandemic suggest that there remains room for growth, putting further pressure on the private rental housing stock.

Relationship between market share and rent level: understanding supply structure in the Japanese private rental housing market

Purpose This study aims to investigate the relationship between market share and rent levels to understand the supply structure in the Japanese private rental housing market. Design/methodology/approach The study calculates the municipal-level market share of a dominant rental housing operator in Japan and ascertained the overall market rent and the dominant operator’s rent premium at the municipal level by using a major web portal’s listing data of rental houses. Findings The study shows that, as market share increased, overall market rent tends to decrease, and analyzed by market share, there is no significant difference between the rent of the dominant operator and the overall market rent. Practical implications The results of the study suggest that dominant operators may have lowered the rent of their own property to prioritize filling vacancies, which, in turn, causes the overall level of market rent to decline. This is an outcome of rental housing operators’ strategy to maximize long-term rental income under sublease contracts with individual owners, which ensures stable rental income for owners regardless of the occupation status of the apartments. Originality/value Previous research on regional monopolies in mortgage sales and brokerage businesses in the USA implies that rental housing operators in a position of great influence over the market can control and keep the market rents at high levels, that is, at large costs for consumers. The findings of the study are novel in showing the inverse relationship in the Japanese private rental market.

Bias in Tenant Selection in Lagos Private Rental Housing Market, Nigeria

Bias in tenant selection is a global phenomenon. This necessitates the need to examine bias in tenant selection in the study area being a prime property market. This study aimed at examining the requirements for tenant selection and the nature of tenant selection bias in the study area. Data were gathered through structured questionnaires administered to 162 Estate Surveyors and Valuers out of which 137 questionnaires were retrieved. Data gathered were analyzed using frequency distribution table, weighted mean and ranking. Findings from the study revealed that all the identified tenant selection requirements are important and income status is the most important tenant selection requirement in the study area. Also, bias base on ethnicity is the most prevalent form of bias in tenant selection with a mean of 4.299. The major cause of tenant selection bias is as a result of previous bad experiences from old tenants with a mean of 4.058. The major consequence of tenant selection bias is increase in the void period with a mean of 4.190. It is imperative for government to legislate and make enforcement against all forms of tenant selection bias as it is inimical to housing accessibility. Also, it is important to orientate residential property owners against the negative consequences of bias in tenant selection.

Special issue on land valuation: Introduction

This paper documents the discrimination against the ‘atypical’ type of tenants in the Tokyo private rental housing market, using tenant-level records on the moving-in inspection process and future rent arrears, which go beyond previous experimental and audit studies on the availability of listing rental properties. We exhibit discrimination in that atypical tenants (e.g., single elderlies, single mothers, and foreigners) are likely to be rejected at the moving-in inspection, even after controlling for their estimated probability of getting into rent arrears using observable traits of individual tenants, including payment ability measures. This can be taste-based and/or statistical discrimination, the latter of which reflects the other potential costs for owners to accommodate atypical tenants, such as the risk of getting into trouble with neighbors. More specifically, statistical discrimination based on their high risk of rent arrears does not exist clearly, as much as the risk is explained by their observable traits, including their weak payment ability. Moreover, the study illustrates that the probability of acceptance at the moving-in inspection is reduced by unreasonable moving behaviors—a move to a place that does not require a moderate commuting distance, a move within the same community, and an increase in commuting distance than before, and in units with low rental costs.

Reducing ethnic discrimination through formal warning: Evidence from two combined field experiments

This article evaluates the effect of a nationwide public policy designed to reduce discrimination in access to accommodation in the private rental housing market. We carried out a correspondence test with 3260 real estate agencies to assess the likelihood of discrimination based on ethnic origin. This test allowed us to identify about 10% of agencies likely to exhibit discriminatory behavior. These agencies were randomly divided into two groups: one group received a formal letter warning them that they had been monitored and reminding them of the legal sanctions to which they were exposing themselves and the other group received no communication. We then re-tested all these real estate agencies for two years and compared their responses. The results indicate that the warning message has a substantial and long-lasting effect on discrimination: it decreases discrimination in the treated group by 80% for at least two years.

Discrimination against the atypical type of tenants in the Tokyo private rental housing market: Evidence from moving-in inspection and rent arrear records

This paper documents the discrimination against the ‘atypical’ type of tenants in the Tokyo private rental housing market, using tenant-level records on the moving-in inspection process and future rent arrears, which go beyond previous experimental and audit studies on the availability of listing rental properties. We exhibit discrimination in that atypical tenants (e.g., single elderlies, single mothers, and foreigners) are likely to be rejected at the moving-in inspection, even after controlling for their estimated probability of getting into rent arrears using observable traits of individual tenants, including payment ability measures. This can be taste-based and/or statistical discrimination, the latter of which reflects the other potential costs for owners to accommodate atypical tenants, such as the risk of getting into trouble with neighbors. More specifically, statistical discrimination based on their high risk of rent arrears does not exist clearly, as much as the risk is explained by their observable traits, including their weak payment ability. Moreover, the study illustrates that the probability of acceptance at the moving-in inspection is reduced by unreasonable moving behaviors—a move to a place that does not require a moderate commuting distance, a move within the same community, and an increase in commuting distance than before, and in units with low rental costs.

Low-End Accumulation: Spatial Transformation and Social Stratification in a Beijing Urban Village

Abstract In late 2017, a tragic fire in southern Beijing led to a massive eviction and demolition campaign that drove out tens of thousands of rural migrant workers in bleak winter weather. While the evictions were widely covered by the mass media, few analyses examined the gongyu 公寓 (apartment complex), a low-rent housing complex where the fire broke out. Based on fieldwork in Beijing's northern fringe, this article examines the spatial transformation of residences from cramped one-story farmhouses to gongyu and how it signals the social stratification of migrant tenants. The emergence of the better-equipped gongyu, as an alternative modernity, caters to the influx of young tenants and migrants working in the service sector. Meanwhile, the rise of the gongyu has propelled an increase in the subcontracting of property management. The rationalization and specialization of the fast-growing private rental housing market have further led to estranged living among migrant tenants and landlords, who experience different forms of displacement in urban villages. Gongyu is the outcome of low-end accumulation, which is intended primarily for constructing low-quality, low-cost rental projects for the “low-end population.” Despite its prevalence, the urban village gongyu represents an overlooked, unrecognized, and undesirable mode of urbanization, which is the target of the recurring housing crackdown in China's capital.

Name matters! The cost of having a foreign-sounding name in the Swedish private housing market.

Both immigration and a troubling housing deficit have increased rapidly in Sweden over the past 20 years. In this internet-based field experiment, we investigated whether there exists discrimination in the Swedish private rental housing market based on the names of apartment seekers. We used a correspondent test by randomly submitting equivalent applications from four fictitious, highly educated, and seemingly “well-behaved” male applicants in response to a number of randomly selected private housing ads. Each advertising landlord received applications from two applicants with names signaling Swedish, Arab/Muslim, Eastern European, or East Asian ethnicity. Our results show that the person with a name associated with the dominant ethnic group received most callbacks from the landlords, while the persons with Eastern European- and East Asian sounding names, and especially the Arab/Muslim-sounding name, yielded significantly lower callback rates. Moreover, each applicant’s callback rates are about the same regardless of whom he was paired with, reinforcing our result that a person’s name clearly matters when applying for an apartment. The comparisons with previous discrimination research focusing on the Swedish housing market show that the situation for a male person with an Arabic/Muslim-sounding name has at least not improved in Sweden in the past decade.

Assessing the impact of selective licencing schemes for private rental housing on mental health and well-being: protocol for a mixed-method natural experiment study in Greater London, UK.

IntroductionThe UK private rental housing market has poorer quality housing compared with other sectors and is subjected to calls for better regulation. Poor quality housing poses risks to mental and physical health, and housing improvement can potentially benefit health and well-being. Local authorities have powers to implement selective licencing (SL) schemes in specific localities. Such schemes involve landlord registration, payment of licence fees, local authority inspection and requirements that landlords conduct any necessary renovation works to ensure housing standards are met. We aim to evaluate SL in Greater London and to test the feasibility of a national evaluation.Methods and analysisWe will measure individual-level and area-level impacts of SL in Greater London between 2011 and 2019. A difference-in-differences approach with propensity score-matched controls will be used. We propose to exploit data from the Annual Population Survey (APS) and health and social benefit registers to measure mental health and well-being at individual (self-reported anxiety) and area (Small Area Mental Health Index) level. We estimate 633 APS participants in our intervention groups compared with 1899 participants in control areas (1:3 ratio of intervention to control). Secondary outcomes will be self-reported well-being and residential stability at the individual level and incidence of police-recorded antisocial behaviour calls and population turnover at the area level. The study size of the area-level analyses will be 3684 lower layer super output areas (including controls). Qualitative semistructured interviews with lead implementers in several London boroughs will produce insights into variations and commonalities between schemes.Ethics and disseminationEthical approval was obtained from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Ethics Committee (reference number 26481) and London Borough of Hackney. All interviewees will be asked for informed written consent. Study findings will be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The private rental housing market before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: A submarket analysis in Cracow, Poland.

How the COVID-19 pandemic has altered the segmentation of residential rental markets is largely unknown. We therefore assessed rental housing submarkets before and during the pandemic in Cracow, Poland. We used geographically and temporally weighted regression to investigate the marginal prices of housing attributes over space–time. The marginal prices were further reduced to a few principal components per time period and spatially clustered to identify housing submarkets. Finally, we applied the adjusted Rand index to evaluate the spatiotemporal stability of the housing submarkets. The results revealed that the pandemic outbreak significantly lowered rents and modified the relevance of some housing characteristics for rental prices. Proximity to the university was no longer among the residential amenities during the pandemic. Similarly, the virus outbreak diminished the effect of a housing unit’s proximity to the city center. The market partitioning showed that the number of Cracow’s residential rental submarkets increased significantly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, as it enhanced the spatial variation in the marginal prices of covariates. Our findings suggest that the emergence of the coronavirus reshaped the residential rental market in three ways: Rents were decreased, the underlying rental price-determining factors changed, and the spatiotemporal submarket structure was altered.

Advance rent mobilisation strategies of graduate renters in Ghana: a submarket of the private rental housing market

The practice of advance rent, where landlords ask renters to pay a lump-sum rent covering 2 or more years, is gaining scholarly and political attention in Africa. Nevertheless, there is limited empirical research investigating how renters mobilize funds to meet this financial commitment. Existing literature suggests that renters, irrespective of their educational level, face difficulties in paying advance rent, hence compelling them to rely mainly on their bonding (family and friends) and bridging (employers and financial institutions) social capital to pay advance rent. Drawing on rational choice and social capital theories coupled with data from a novel (graduate) sub-market of Ghana’s rental housing market, this article finds that personal savings remain the most rational current and future source of funding options graduate renters draw upon to pay advance rent, albeit some still drawing on their social capital. The findings demonstrate that graduate renters do not use bonding social capital in their future mobilization strategies after they have drawn on the same in previous years, although they continue to rely on their bridging social capital and other strategies to mobilize funds for advance rent. The study suggests the need to rethink rational choice and social capital theories to incorporate inter-temporal dynamics among different social groups and to traverse the current binary conception of the rental housing market in Ghana to consider different sub-markets and how they respond to existing challenges in the housing sector.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Private Rental Housing Market in Poland: What Do Experts Say and What Do Actual Data Show?

The aim of the article is to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the level of housing rents using the example of the City of Krakow. This study is based on objective data on rental prices and subjective information obtained from real estate agents using a questionnaire survey. The research revealed that the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic actually led to a 6-7% decrease in prices in the rental market in Krakow, while at the same time the surveyed real estate agents had estimated that rents would drop by about 13%. With the second wave of the pandemic, it is possible to see that its immediate impact, i.e. between the third and fourth quarter of 2020, has led to a further 6.25% drop in rents. It should be noted that the latter decrease was very accurately predicted, both by the survey respondents and by the econometric models used. Finally, the results of the analysis also indicated that the worsening of the pandemic in the last quarter of 2020 will have a significant impact on rent levels in Krakow for all of next year. Regardless of how the economy develops, rental prices are forecast to fall further in 2021q1. However, in the subsequent quarters of 2021, rents are projected to increase, but ultimately their level will not return to pre-pandemic values even in 2021q4. The latter is likely to happen only in the second half of 2022.

Accessing Private Rental Housing in the Absence of Housing Information in Ghana

While housing research in the developed world illustrates rental information channels, little is known about the situation in developing countries. This study examines the channels of information that are used in the private rental housing market by renters using Kumasi metropolis in Ghana as a case study. Using qualitative research methods involving interviews, findings show that unlike the developed world where rental information is readily available online, renters rely on a network of friends, relatives, co-worshippers and informal agents to find rental properties. A personal search is also common amongst renters. The use of these channels of information is founded on the absence of publicly available rental data. It is suggested that the rental space be regulated as a starting point to ensuring more formality and a better flow of information in the rental market.

Private rental housing market underdevelopment: life cycle model simulations for Poland

ABSTRACTThe share of the private rental housing market in Central and Eastern European countries is low. With a survey data from Poland, I show that strong tenure preferences of households toward owning can be attributed to both economic and psychological factors. Building on these findings, I develop a life cycle model and I conduct counterfactual simulations to evaluate how changes in the structure of the rental market affect its size. I show that in the alternative scenario, which assumes (i) a change in the quality of rental services, (ii) lowering rental prices and (iii) diminishing fiscal incentives to own, the size of the private rental market is significantly higher, which leads to welfare gains for poor households.

Analyzing the private rental housing market in Shanghai with open data

The failure of public housing policies and skyrocketing housing prices have made the private rental sector an increasingly important part of the housing system in Chinese metropolises. However, due to the lack of data, the private rental housing market remains poorly understood. By integrating open data, this paper comprehensively examines the spatial patterns and determinants of residential rents in Shanghai at the intra-urban level. We find that high rents are concentrated heavily in the inner-city area, which not only forces low-income families to live in the suburbs, where rents are still relatively affordable, but also makes housing costs a heavy burden to non-native young professionals. The results of spatial regressions suggest that the rental housing market in Shanghai is shaped by regional level factors such as job opportunities, salary levels, and the size of the “floating” population, and neighborhood level indicators like public transport facilities and service amenities. Such factors are differentiated across space. In the areas with better infrastructure, the roles of high salaries and attractive amenities are highly significant. In suburban districts, the presence of a larger “floating” population, better access to metro stations, sharing bikes, bus stops, and shopping facilities tend to raise rents. These patterns indicate that the geographical inequality of infrastructures, spatially imbalanced job accessibility, and institutions that make housing unaffordable have reinforced the rental and commuting burdens on economically disadvantaged groups, which also undermines their social mobility. Thus, our study suggests that the Chinese government should devote more effort to decentralize high-paying jobs, improve employment accessibility in urban peripheries and villages, as well as reform public housing policies and provide more public housing to make rental housing more affordable.

Urban housing demand, permanent income and uncertainty: Microdata analysis of Hong Kong's rental market

The sensitivity of housing demand to income changes has important implications for the evolution of housing affordability and the behavior of urban households. In Hong Kong, investigations into this issue have shown the increasing importance of the private rental housing market, which is regarded as suboptimal and to contribute to gentrification and inequality problems. Using microdata from four waves of Hong Kong census data between 1996 and 2011, this paper aims to estimate the income elasticity of demand for private rental housing. A permanent income model was adopted to isolate permanent income and transitory income at household level. Then, the Heckman two-stage procedure was used to correct selection bias and the quantile regression (QR) approach was used to investigate the heterogeneity of demand elasticities across different tiers of housing expenditure. The empirical results showed that the permanent income elasticities fell within a range of 0.536–0.698 and transitory income shock had a positive and significant impact on the demand for rental housing. Moreover, a U shape of permanent income elasticity across the whole distribution of housing expenditure was revealed. Households in both the upper and lower tiers were more sensitive to permanent income changes, with the higher tier of households being more sensitive to transitory income shocks. These findings not only shed light on the long-term movement and cross-sectional heterogeneity of housing demand in the private rental housing market, but also have implications for studies of the rental housing demand in other developed cities.

Housing and Health of Kiribati Migrants Living in New Zealand.

Settlement is a complex process of adjustment for migrants and refugees. Drawing on recent research on the settlement experiences of Kiribati migrants and their families living in New Zealand, this article examines the role of housing as an influencer of the settlement and health of Kiribati migrants. Using qualitative methodology, in-depth interviews were conducted with fourteen Kiribati migrants (eight women and six men) representing 91 family members about the key issues and events that shaped their settlement in New Zealand. The stories told by participants affirm the association between housing and health. The study serves as an important reminder that children bear a great cost from living in poorly insulated and damp housing, and adults bear the mental costs, including social isolation resulting from inadequate rental housing. Detailed information about how this migrant group entered the private rental housing market, by taking over the rental leases of other Kiribati migrants vacating their rental properties, indicated some of the unintended consequences related to a lack of incentives for landlords to make improvements. With the most vulnerable families most at risk from inadequate housing, this research concludes that there is a need for minimum housing standards to protect tenants.