Journal of Housing and the Built Environment : HBE

Second homes are much valued as recreational resources and also as important commodities on the property market. This study examines the trading patterns and regional price development of Danish second homes from 1992 to 2020. Second home sales volumes and prices reflect the general economic booms and busts and also the possibilities to rent out the property on sharing platforms. However, across regional clusters and over time, property price developments suggest a significant social rigidity in preferences and prospects...

Lockdowns were the major policy response to COVID-19 containment in many countries, and subsequently many people spent abnormal amounts of time at home. Research has found that housing conditions affected more peoples' mental health during the COVID-19 crisis than prior to it, and vulnerable groups were especially affected. One group that may be particularly vulnerable is private renters in shared housing. Using a socio-economic lens, our research examined to what extent mental well-being outcomes were associated with housing conditions in shared housing under COVID-19 restrictions in Australia...

The basic variables associated with the dormitory satisfaction of 140 undergraduate university students were examined using a questionnaire. Secondly, the roles of (a) gender differences and (b) distance of the rooms to communal areas, (c) room density (i.e., identical rooms housing three vs. four students), and (d) dormitory layout (i.e., clustered vs. long corridor design) on crowding and privacy were explored. The aims of the present studies were twofold: The first aim was to explore variables associated with students' satisfaction with their university dormitories...

Due to the results of the COVID-19 epidemic on health, the positive effect of social distancing has been highlighted. Nevertheless, the effect of housing layouts on resident's perceived behavioral control over social distancing in shared open spaces have been rarely investigated in the context of pandemic. Filling this gap, the current study examines the moderating effect of perceived behavioral control on the relationship between social isolation and psychological distress. Data from 1349 women residing in 9 gated communities during the Iranian national lockdown were collected...

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically affected the socioeconomic activities and peoples' daily life, resulting in a change in locational preferences in the real estate markets. Although enormous efforts have been devoted to examining the housing price impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, little is known about the responses of the real estate markets to the evolving pandemic control measures. This study investigates the price gradient effects of various pandemic-related policy shocks using a hedonic price model on the district-level property transaction data in Shanghai, China over a 48-month period from 2018 to 2021...

Do informal and formal mechanisms of guardianship work together to reduce residential burglary? In this article we argue that informal guardianship moderates the relationship between formal mechanisms of guardianship and residential burglary. Formal guardianship requires some level of social cohesion and trust to be effective against residential burglary. We test this argument with the use of robust panel quantile methods controlling for time effects, spatial effects, and alternative explanations. Using Mexico City neighborhood crime and census data, we show evidence of a moderating weakening effect of informal guardianship on the previous relationship, particularly in deprived neighborhoods and only in the upper quantiles of the residential burglary distribution...

Flexibility is essential for sustainable housing and has been one of the design elements in Finnish architecture. However, between 1990 and 2010, flexible solutions in residential buildings were rare and included in only some advanced builders' projects. Research on flexible housing exists but is scarce on knowledge of the 2020s drivers and market solutions for flexible housing. Therefore, we searched for trends, patents and market solutions for flexible housing in Finland. We also interviewed representatives of construction companies, designers, housing providers, financers and regulatory authorities to understand their views on flexibility; its meaning, benefits, challenges, market demand and technical solutions providing flexibility...

UNLABELLED: This article describes racial and ethnic differences in mortgage payment difficulties during the COVID-19 pandemic and examines whether disparities exist in the benefits of the unemployment insurance (UI) program. The sample consisted of 80,797 jobless mortgage borrowers who received or waited for UI benefits between August 2020 and May 2022. Considering individual- and state-level variables in multilevel logistic regressions, we examined rates of mortgage delay in the last month and payment concerns about the next month by racial and ethnic group...

The housing affordability crisis is one of the most pressing issues in urban centres around the globe, affecting especially young adults. Some theorists have in response begun calling for the provision of more public housing or less housing financialisation (free market). The goal of our article is to demonstrate the housing attitudes of Czech millennials towards state interventions that are designed to address the decline in housing affordability, using a quantitative attitude survey and a series of qualitative interviews...

Since the accessory dwelling unit (ADU) has emerged as a policy alternative to increase housing stock and provide affordable options for areas impacted by housing shortages, many local governments recently adopted ADU policies that promote the construction of ADUs. Taking the City of Los Angeles as the study area, this paper examines how the city's ADU ordinance impacts the relationship of the characteristics of the properties and neighborhoods with ADU development by constructing multilevel logistic regression models...

The share of income spent on housing varies across individuals and countries but it has been increasing over time in a wide range of countries, particularly among lower income households, rising housing affordability as a prominent challenge in higher income economies. Variations in share of income spent on housing can reflect variations in household preferences but when more than a certain level of income is spent on housing, households face tradeoffs between housing and non-housing consumption that are expected to negatively affect their overall life satisfaction...

The study explores the collective settings of Hallenwohnen (hall dwelling) as a section of the Zollhaus settlement, which is the follow-up project by the Kalkbreite housing cooperative, functioning since January 2021 in Zurich, Switzerland. Hallenwohnen is the first legal hall cohousing arrangement in Switzerland. The private and semiprivate spaces of Hallenwohnen consist of a large open hall with collective basic structures and mobile residential towers (rollable spaces) as the core concept, which offer an affordable, self-managed/self-build, collaborative living and coworking arrangement in the center of Zurich...

In the real-estate industry, floor plans are commonly used to communicate spatial layouts of housing alternatives to house hunters. Using the method of stated preferences, this research investigates whether lay-individuals' preferences for layout attributes differ when floor plans versus text descriptions are used to measure preferences for build-to-rent apartments. The study involved 417 student respondents evaluating four hypothetical apartments twice, with the apartments varying in two focal attributes, layout orientation, and dining space status...

Homeownership rates have declined in several countries including Denmark and Turkey since 2010. A majority of the decline in homeownership has been observed among low income holders. This variation finding comparative case study compares similar patterns of neoliberal housing policies to examine wealth inequalities based on homeownership despite fundamental differences in housing markets and welfare state provision. The comparison of Denmark and Turkey reveals similar adoption of policies that support financialization as a strategy to recover from financial crises...

This paper investigates the equilibrium adjustment mechanism of new housing construction in urban China after the 1998 housing market reform. This analysis is based on a panel of 35 metropolitan areas over the period 2001-2015. The new housing supply function is specified in terms of changes rather than levels to capture the disequilibrium state of the Chinese housing market. In addition, current, one-year and two-year lags of the controls are used to capture the impact of the state control of construction land permits (Land Regulation Act)...

Grounded in psychological and social constructs, the need for privacy is reflected in human socio-spatial behaviour and in our own home. To discuss housing privacy, this article presents a systematic literature review (SLR) that identified theoretical and methodological aspects relevant to the topic. The research was based on consolidated protocols to identify, select and evaluate articles published between 2000 and 2021 in three databases (Web of Science, Google Scholar and Scielo), with 71 eligible articles identified for synthesis...

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether there is a bubble in the Turkish housing market during the period of 2006-2018. In conjunction with the irrational bubble theory, this study applies the Pitros and Arayici (Int J Hous Mark Anal 9(2):190-221, 2016. 10.1108/IJHMA-01-2015-0002) bubble algorithmic model. The empirical results reveal that the Turkish housing market was in a bubble during 2013-2017 period, the peak/last year of the bubble is the year 2017 and that the bubble-bust occurred in 2018. The foremost contribution of this study is that it is the first to document a historical housing bubble episode for Turkey using the premises of irrational bubble theory and the first to apply an algorithmic approach to assess the bubble risk for the period of 2006 and 2018...

Following World War I, rent control became a standard policy response to the housing shortage and the resulting rent increases. Typically, economists blame it for creating inefficiencies in the housing market and beyond. We investigate whether rental market regulations (including rent control, protection of tenants from eviction, and housing rationing) had any effects in a middle-income Latin American economy, such as Argentina. To answer this question, we take advantage of a wide range of housing market indicators and restrictive rental regulation indices covering almost one century...

The environmental footprint of housing is greatly influenced by the size of a dwelling. Housing size is the result of households' dwelling selections; accordingly, it is critical to consider residential preferences and choices to inform efforts towards housing sustainability. This study aimed to understand tenants' preferences for and choices of housing size as one amongst several dwelling characteristics and identify obstacles and opportunities for reducing size in the light of promoting sustainable housing...

Poverty, poor housing and poor health are complexly interconnected in a cycle that has proven resistant to intervention by housing providers or policy makers. Research often focuses on the impacts of the physical housing defects, particularly upon rates of (physical) illness and disease. There has been comparatively little research into the ways in which housing services can underpin the generation of positive health and, especially, wellbeing. Drawing on qualitative data from 75 tenants in the social and private rented sectors, this paper describes the findings of a research project that tracked tenants' experiences across their first year in a new tenancy in Greater Glasgow, Scotland...