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The purpose of this paper is to present a brief analytical summary of the current downturn in the UK housing sector. It then aims to ask whether the severity of the slowdown and its eventual consequences have been exacerbated by key aspects of housing and welfare policy.

The paper examines: the promotion of property as an investment by successive UK governments since the Second World War; how the investment emphasis of policy enabled the promotion and growth of private rental partly funded through buy‐to‐let mortgages – a new financial product that allows individuals to take out a mortgage on a property for letting purposes; the expansion of cheap credit, due in part to the burgeoning securitised lending sector drawing heavily on housing equity (the decline of which is implicated in the current economic downturn); and reforms of the welfare system in the mid 1990s that have severely weakened the safety net for low‐income mortgage borrowers who are most vulnerable to market turbulence.

It was found that there are wider questions to be asked of the current downturn than how deep or how long the current recession will be. More important questions relate to the role that housing policy has played in exacerbating volatility and the future implications for modernizing housing policy.

The paper identifies a number of key research questions that follow from the analysis regarding the winners and losers of homeownership and the concomitant implications for policy.

The paper identifies areas of government failure relevant to the current crisis and knowledge gaps that need to be addressed in order to develop a coherent evidence base on which to base future reform of housing policy. As such, the findings will be of interest to policy makers and housing researchers.

Downward movements in house prices can exacerbate bank crises if mark‐to‐market methods of asset valuation are used by lenders to assess their current balance sheet exposure. There is an imperative to find methods of house price index calculation that reflect equilibrium prices rather than temporary undershoots. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new methodology in order to evaluate whether market house prices are different from their fundamental asset prices.

This paper proposes a method for house asset valuation that incorporates expected house price appreciation as an endogenous variable. This avoids the necessity to make conjectures about expected future house price appreciation when applying Poterba's user‐cost method of house asset valuation. The methodological extension to Poterba's user‐cost method of house asset valuation endogenises expected house price appreciation as the no‐arbitrage expected price appreciation consistent with the term structure of real interest rates. A benchmark equilibrium house valuation can be calculated because the term structure of real forward interest rates is observable in financial markets. This enables market house prices to be compared with the benchmark equilibrium valuation in order to determine if house prices are overvalued or undervalued.

The paper presents the results of a worked example to illustrate how this approach could be applied in practice.

There are a number of issues associated with the measurement of user cost which we do not address here and which the authors hope will provide fruitful avenues for future research. There are also issues regarding the impact of tax frameworks on the returns to housing, particularly the taxation of mortgage interest and imputed income. More work also needs to be done in comparing the performance of the extended Poterba model against alternative approaches, such as those that use expected inflation and/or long‐run average house price appreciation, or the real interest rate spread to proxy for expected capital appreciation, and how these different approaches compare in different institutional and socio‐economic contexts.

The authors' results underscore the rationale for mortgage banks to use marking to model instead of marking to market, and this in turn should reduce unnecessary macroeconomic instability when the market prices of houses undershoot fundamental value.

The paper shows how the term structure of real forward interest rates, observable in financial markets, can be used to extend the Poterba model.

Why do lenders shrink back from full risk pricing in certain credit markets, even when a sophisticated system of credit scoring is already in place? Fear of bad publicity is the usual reason cited but this paper offers a complementary explanation which suggests that there may be an underlying financial process driving such behaviour. The key proposition of the paper is that risk pricing can cause adverse selection which has the potential to mitigate any positive benefits such a pricing strategy may bring to the lender. This explanation is developed by introducing risk pricing into the seminal Stiglitz and Weiss model and in so doing offers the first substantial link between the risk assessment and credit rationing literatures.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between organisational identification and identification with work group and profession for knowledge workers. The literature points to two competing standpoints, first, a compatible relationship between focal points of identity and second, a trade off relationship whereby an increase in one is at the expense of another.

Using the population of a large public UK sector organisation ordinary least squares regression was used to examine these relationships.

The findings established a strong relationship in which work group, organisational and professional identification were compatible.

The findings indicate, at least in this context, that no inherent trade off or problem reconciling multiple identities was evident. Regrettably the authors do not have the capacity to comment on the weighting or the relative importance placed on each focus of identity; this is an area for future research.

This paper seeks to contribute to the discussions of is the relationship between organisational identification and allegiances with the workgroup or profession, which is underdeveloped in the literature.

Developing residential units is crucial in the socio-economic development of a country. The investor faces not only uncertain transaction price (price risk), but also uncertainties about the marketing period risk. Predicting when the incurred money is being realized is difficult because of the imperfect nature of the real estate market. Thus, the purpose of this study is to analyze the variables that explain the time on the market (TOM) of housing units, identifying the relationships in-between and the effects on TOM of residential properties.

Following a multi-stage sampling process, a random sample of 120 housing units was selected. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire contained 57 variables that can affect TOM. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to confirm some of the data and information on residential units from the developers. Direct observations were conducted to verify certain physical attributes and, finally, they were comprehensively analyzed using quantitative analysis techniques in SPSS 16.0 Statistical package.

Results confirmed that lesser advertising prices, attractive environment, proximity to the city center and proper shape of lands reduce the TOM. Similarly, higher prices, longer distance to the city center and irregular shape of land increase the TOM. The results strengthen the necessity of a comfortable environment appropriate to live, probably with greenery or water bodies, which is a key influential factor that reduces the TOM in Sri Lanka.

wIn the Sri Lankan context, there are few contributions to the real estate literature in this regard. Many scholars have concentrated on physical and economic characteristics, whereas this research adds the environmental factors. Therefore, this research makes a significant contribution to the body of knowledge in this area, as it puts more attention on including several variables, as well as newly introduced variables as determinants. Consumers can apply the research findings to assess the relative importance of housing attributes and services which they perceive most valuable, and then to make their purchase decisions. The findings also contribute to the investigations of the behavior of housing attributes and enable knowing as to what factors are to be promoted and what to be omitted to gain a shorter TOM.