Challenges facing housing affordability in Beijing in the twenty‐first century
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is analyse to what extent the high price had led to low levels of housing affordability in the period 2002‐2006 in Beijing. Due to the importance of housing for local residents and the crucial position that real estate market in the Chinese economy is currently in, research into the housing affordability issues is now essential. It is important to consider the social circumstances that are predominantly related to both the standard of living and the national economy in Beijing.Design/methodology/approach – The housing price to income ratio (PIR) method and Housing Affordability Index (HAI) model are used to measure housing affordability in Beijing. Then, the reasons for the high housing prices in Beijing are discussed and government homeownership‐oriented policies to help citizen on housing issues are examined. Finally, future proposals which can contribute to ease the housing affordability problem are recommended.Findings – The main findings in this research are that t...
Spatial price differences and inequality in China: Housing market evidence
The large literature on regional inequality in China is hampered by incomplete evidence on price dispersion across space, making it hard to distinguish real and nominal inequality. The two main methods used to calculate spatial deflators have been to price a national basket of goods and services across China’s different regions or else to estimate a food Engel curve and define the deflator as that needed for nominally similar households to have the same food budget shares in all regions. Neither approach is convincing with the data available in China. Moreover, a focus on tradable goods like food may be misplaced because of the emerging literature on the rapid convergence of traded goods prices within China that contrasts with earlier claims of fragmented internal markets. In a setting where traded goods prices converge rapidly, the main source of price dispersion across space should come from non-traded items, and especially from housing given the fixity of land. In this paper we use newly available data on dwelling sales in urban China to develop spatially-disaggregated indices of house prices, which are then used as spatial deflators for both provinces and core urban districts. These new deflators complement existing approaches that have relied more on traded goods prices, and are used to re-examine the evidence on the level of regional inequality. Around one-quarter of the apparent spatial inequality disappears once account is taken of cost-of-living differences.
Affordability for Housing Association Tenants. A Key Issue for British Social Housing Policy
ABSTRACT As a result of changes to the financial regime for housing associations, affordability has become a major issue of debate in social rented housing in Britain. This paper assesses the implications of trying to construct a finance system for housing associations based on a regime of ‘affordable rents’ and the ‘safety net’ of Housing Benefits but with the state declining to define the central concept of affordability. Using examples of a number of Western countries, and empirical evidence from the sector in Scotland, the present position is criticised, and a route out of the policy vacuum is suggested. This is founded on the premise that housing is a means rather than an end, within a broader social policy. Given the political constraints, one solution lies in studies of the expenditure patterns and standards of living of different groups of housing association tenants, and in the creation of a sector-specific organisational subsidy to be available in addition to the usual producer- and consumer-subsidies.