Housing affordability: an econometric framing for policy discussions
International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis
ISSN: 1753-8270
Article publication date: 14 April 2022
Issue publication date: 28 February 2023
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to analyze short- and long-run market-sensitive drivers of housing affordability. The study highlights an ongoing housing affordability crisis in an emerging market context by also providing an empirical tool to combat the crisis.
Design/methodology/approach
To investigate determinants of uniquely constructed effective housing affordability index and house price to income ratio index, the author uses a bound testing approach to cointegration and error correction models, besides causality tests, variance decompositions and impulse response functions. This study uses Turkish data for the period of 2007 M06 and 2017 M12.
Findings
The evidence suggests that the housing affordability crisis is mainly driven by credit expansion, rent and construction costs. A sensible housing policy response would target these variables. This evidence suggests that housing affordability mostly depends on housing market dynamics rather than policies because of the exogeneous/cyclical natures of the drivers.
Research limitations/implications
Data constraints shape the study. A regional or an aggregate-level panel study cannot be developed because of a lack of data. This limitation inevitably results in the exclusion of relevant socio-economic/political factors and is also the main reason for the lack of comparative analysis in a cross-country setting.
Practical implications
This study argues that dependency on neoliberal housing market practices seems the underlying reason for the lack of efficient policy answers and the ongoing affordability crisis. From a policymaking perspective, the study suggests that necessary policy measures to resolve the housing affordability crisis may give a specific emphasis on housing rent, housing credit volume and construction costs as the major components of the crisis.
Originality/value
This study develops a novel measure and presents a new conceptual framework by combining quantitative research methods and policymaking in housing affordability. In this respect, to the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first work to comparatively investigate the determinants of uniquely developed monthly housing affordability measurements.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author completed this research during his academic visit to Department of Urban Studies and Planning, The University of Sheffield. His current affiliation is “Capital Markets Board of Turkey and TED University, Ankara, Turkey”.
This study is supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) under the 2219 National Postdoctoral Research Scholarship Program (research grant number 1059B191700414). The research benefited from the useful comments of Craig Watkins and the data construction support of Esra Alp Coskun. The author also thanks Murat Atay (Garanti BBVA Mortgage) and Reidin for providing data to the study. The opinions expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not reflect the positions of any of the organizations with which he is affiliated.
Funding: The author declares in the “Acknowledgements” that “this study supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) under the 2219 National Postdoctoral Research Scholarship Programme (research grant number 1059B191700414).”
Declarations: Availability of data and materials: The full data set used and/or analyzed during the current study is available from the osf.io/dzsc7 or from the author on a reasonable request.
Citation
Coskun, Y. (2023), "Housing affordability: an econometric framing for policy discussions", International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 374-407. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJHMA-01-2022-0015
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited