The use of data from South Australia's rental tenancy tribunal for research and policy analysis: Issues of validity and efficacy

Abstract

This paper examines the value for research and policy development of rental tenancy data collected by the South Australian Rental Tenancy Tribunal (RTT). The data held by the RTT are for South Australia only, but comparable organisations exist in a number of other states, such as New South Wales and Victoria. Lessons learned from South Australia could serve as a pilot for the development of a new (semi‐) national framework for monitoring the private rental market.     

Formation of private rental stock in Turkey

Withdrawal from socially owned housing provision and the privatization of the stock have stimulated growth of the owner-occupied sector in many European countries. These processes have also led to a more significant role for the private rental sector. Apart from a model of ‘social deliberation’ there are other models to explain the evolution of this sector in its socio-political and historical context. In the formation of a large private rental sector in Turkey, public policy had no contribution to make. Instead, it was a particular mode of urban development that allowed the proliferation of the sector as a subsidiary process of urbanization. The relative conditions of tenants and the policy requirements in this context are very different than those observed elsewhere. Murat Balamir has degrees in M. Arch. in Architecture, M. Phil. in Planning, Ph.D. in Political Science and Public Administration. He is affiliated with the City and Regional Planning Department of the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara. He is a founder member of the Housing Research Center and the Disaster Management Center at METU.     

Labour market change and housing market segmentation in south Australia's non‐metropolitan private rental market

Abstract

This paper reports on research into the relationship between labour market change and the private rental market in non‐metropolitan South Australia for the period 1990 to 2000. It finds that there is considerable ‘stickiness’ within the market and that there has been a limited supply response to changing levels of demand. This has contributed to housing and labour shortages in some regions and over‐supply in others. Each circumstance has generated considerable dilemmas for public policy.     

Book Reviews

Abstract

This paper uses census data for 1986 and 1996 to estimate the shortage of low cost private rental stock in Australia. During this period there was a 34 per cent increase in the number of households in private rental, with a disproportionate growth in households with either low or high incomes. At the same time, however, the private rental stock affordable for these households declined significantly. This combination of increased need and decreased supply has resulted in an overall shortage of low cost stock. This shortage is exacerbated by a ‘misallocation’ of existing low cost stock, arising from its use by high income households.     

Telling stories: the role of narratives in rental housing policy change in New Zealand

Abstract

This paper examines the emergence of the regulation of housing conditions in the private rental sector as a policy issue in New Zealand using an analysis of narratives in media, advocacy and political texts. Narratives are evident in public discourse and are the stories told by interest groups to identify and cast a problem as a policy issue in a way analogous to the beliefs of the speaker. This case study shows that while the narratives used by advocates for policy change were effective in raising the issue, they were ineffective in overcoming a counter-narrative of excessive regulation by the government and concerns of possible rent rises. This opposition to regulation of the private sector by a right-leaning government needs to be more effectively countered by more powerful intersecting narratives, if evidence on the relationship between housing, health and safety is to become the basis for effectively implemented government policy.     

Rental security and the property manager in a tenant’s search for a private rental property

Abstract

This article builds on current understandings of rental security by exploring the important role of the property manager in a tenant's search for a private rental property. In the absence of any legislated right to housing, as is the case in many Anglophone societies, the decision to accept or reject a tenancy application is in the hands of the landlord, and, in many cases, the property manager, who provides expert advice to the landlord. A qualitative content analysis of blogs featured on two national websites advertising rental properties in Australia, identifies six aspects of interactions between the tenant and property manager argued to impact a tenant’s ability to secure a rental property: responsibility, making an impression, established relationships, honesty, flexibility and creative thinking. Findings suggest that understandings of rental security need to extend beyond a tenant’s experience while leasing and must incorporate experiences during the search for a private rental property.     

Build-to-Rent and the financialization of rental housing: future research directions

Abstract

With the expansion of institutional investors into urban rental markets, many cities have witnessed a rise in Build-to-Rent (BtR). This article reviews the financialization of rental housing literature and identifies opportunities for urban housing scholars to progress understandings of BtR through future empirical and theoretical efforts. In particular, it proposes a broadening of the housing research agenda around three analytical entry points. These entry points relate to relatively understudied structural transformations of our urban housing systems implicated in the rise of BtR, namely: (1) the diversification of build-to-sell development models; (2) the evolution of the private rental sector; and (3) labour market–housing market realignments. Comparative inquiry promises to enrich understandings of BtR by revealing how city rental accommodation and tenancies are recalibrated by the investment imperatives of institutional investors and BtR asset shareholders, and with what benefits and at what costs to whom. Such contributions will also provide rich data to progress conceptual efforts to locate BtR within broader processes of housing financialization.     

Promoting the supply of low income rental housing

Abstract

There is disturbing evidence of a contraction in the stock of low income private rental housing. In this paper we offer evidence indicating that federal government tax preferences, economies of scope and higher operating costs are part of the explanation for this contraction. The Australian Bureau of Statistics Rental Investors’ Survey is used to gauge whether low income housing tax credits and tax‐free capital gains thresholds can be used to promote the supply of low income rental housing.     

The future of the private rental sector in sweden

The private rental sector in Sweden is competing on a less-regulated and less-subsidized housing market. The paper analyses the prospects of this sector. The private sector has the dual advantage of an older (more attractive and centrally located) stock and a slightly beter-off tenant profile than the municipal sector. Thus, the private sector will be less affected by the withdrawal of interest subsidies, as these were given to new stock. The rent-to-income ratio will surpass 30 per cent in all sectors of the housing market in the year 2002, according to a recent projection. The private sector suffers less from vacancies than the municipal sector. The economic situation is, however, characterized by high LTV ratios, due to a price and borrowing boom in the late 1980s. This has led to bankruptcies and a weak economic situation for many private landlords. The boom was followed by a bust in 1990–93. Both the upswing and the downturn can be explained by fundamentals such as changes in GDP, unemployment, housing subsidy and tax rules. In the present recession, the private rental sector will benefit from its large share of small dwellings, which will also be advantagenous in the longer run, in view of the demographic trend towards more small households. There is fierce competition between the private and the municipal housing sector. In the short run, the private sector will benefit from the removal of interest subsidies. The effects will be felt in the younger municipal sector. All in all, both short-run and long-run considerations point at a housing market in Sweden which will keep its dualistic character of free competition between the private and the municipal sector in the future. Bengt Turner is Professor of Economics and Chair of the Institute for Housing Research at Uppsala University. He is also chairman of the European Network for Housing Research and coordinates a working group on housing finance. His research area is housing policy, microeconomic analysis of the housing market, as well as housing finance. He has also analysed the housing situation in transitory (East European) countries. In Sweden he is actively involved in housing policy formation as an expert in Governmental commissions and as a member of a number of research boards. Tommy Berger is an economist at the Institute of Housing Research, Uppsala University. His main interest is in housing finance and taxation policy.     

Private Rental Housing in Hong Kong

This paper examines selected aspects of housing policy and its influence on private rental housing in Hong Kong. Its ambitions are modest, in part because so little research has been conducted on the sector, as a consequence of the small size of the sector as well as the concentration of socio-political, economic and policy analyses on the other major housing sectors, namely public renting and home ownership. It is argued that a fundamental function of private renting, to provide a functional substitute and counter-balance to distortions in the market for private home ownership, has been systematically undermined in Hong Kong. In spite of its historical importance in meeting Hong Kong people's housing needs, the sector's decline has been steep and it can now be fairly described as a marginalised tenure, despite incomplete structural adjustment post- Asian Financial Crisis. It is suggested that a fundamental reason for the decline of the private rental sector has been the impact of government policy, which undermined the private rental sector and thus an important element of the market mechanism in housing provision. The government's ideology of home ownership has also functioned to transfer lower middle-income families into the owner occupied sector. Although the Hong Kong government has not been as overtly hostile to this sector as governments have been elsewhere, it nevertheless also seems to envisage no real role for the private rental sector in a housing delivery system molded by policy preference for home ownership, rather than fostering viable economic competition by also facilitating an efficient private rental sector.     

The supply of private rented housing in Canada

Canadian housing policy objectives are generally pursued through a market framework. There is little provision of non-market housing. Thus, while Canada has a substantial private rented sector, it has only a small social rented housing sector. About a third of all dwellings belong to private landlords for market renting and only six percent are owned by public and private landlords for non-profit renting. The supply of dwellings newly constructed specifically for private market rental has fallen over the last 20 years. This fall has been compensated for in part by the supply of existing dwellings that have been transferred from other tenures. There has also been a fall in the proportion of private market rented dwellings owned by corporate landlords and an increase in the proportion owned by small-scale individual landlords, including individuals buying existing dwellings in other tenures to convert to private renting. These recent supply-side changes have been in response to three factors. First, changes to the federal tax system and direct supply incentives have reduced the attractiveness of investing in private renting for corporations but increased it for individuals. Second, the demand for private renting has fallen amongst middle- and high-income households because of demographic and tax changes. This has reduced the numbers of private renting households able to pay the rents needed to make new construction profitable. Third, other public policies have also had an impact on supply, including rent controls imposed by provincial governments and land use planning restrictions and building standards imposed by local authorities. An important feature of the Canadian private rental market is its geographical diversity, with supply-side trends varying in different provinces and urban areas in accordance with variations in demand and local policies. Tony Crook is Professor of Town & Regional Planning and Head of Department at the University of Sheffield. His main current research interest is housing policy, especially the investment decisions of private landlords and housing associations and the relationships between housing policy and land use planning. His research work has been funded by DoE, ESRC and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It has been widely published in books and in academic and professional journals. He is currently Chair of the Conference of Heads of Planning Schools. He is also active in the worlds of policy and practice. He is a member of the RTPI Housing and Renewal Panel, trustee of two housing associations, and an independent director of one of the new Local Housing Companies.     

Band-aid or Panacea? The Role of Private Rental Support Programs in Addressing Access Problems in the Australian Housing Market

Australia has a significant private rental market with over a quarter of households renting their home from a private landlord. Many of these households are on low incomes and receive assistance from private rental support programs provided by each Australian state and territory. In spite of these large numbers, little is known about the effectiveness of policy initiatives to assist low-income private renters. Limited knowledge of the private rental support programs stands in stark contrast to the detailed research on programs established to address homelessness and problems within the public housing sector. This paper addresses this lacuna by reporting on the suite of initiatives currently funded by state governments to assist low-income households (for example, bond loans and rental deposits, advice and help with removal expenses). Based on a comprehensive study of Private Rental Support Programs (PRSPs) commissioned by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, it is argued that though policies to assist vulnerable tenants are acknowledged as a success by practitioners and clients, their effectiveness as a policy instrument is undermined by wider structural changes in the housing market. The paper concludes that the stress faced by many vulnerable households is likely to intensify over the coming years thereby compounding the pressure on state Housing Authorities to provide more comprehensive packages of support that extend beyond just a ‘one-off’ form of assistance.     

Shifting subsidy from bricks and mortar to people: Experiences in Britain and West Germany

Since the early 1970s there has been a very similar shift in the balance of public spending on housing in Britain and Germany from general supply subsidies to demand subsidies (income related housing allowances and tax expenditures). This paper compares and contrasts the structures of those subsidy systems, the problems associated with them and current directions of change. Although there are close parallels in the shift of policy in both countries towards ‘targeting’ of explicit subsidies and in favour of greater profit‐making private provision, the environments in which this has occurred are very different. In particular, the lack of a functioning market for private rental housing in Britain—itself in part a function of tax and subsidy arrangements—severely limits the freedom of manoeuvre of British policy makers compared with their German counterparts.     

The responsiveness of the private rental sector in Australia to changes in commonwealth taxation policy

The introduction of a series of tax reforms by the Hawke government midway through the 1980s generated widespread disagreement about their liable impact upon the production, availability and cost of rental accommodation in Australia. In this paper we examine the validity of the claims made for and against the tax reforms (ie the ‘quarantining’ of negative gearing, the imposition of a capital gains tax, and provision for a 4 per cent depreciation allowance on new rental housing) by setting them against trends in the private housing sector, and other housing and investment markets.

Although the real estate industry was prepared to attribute the adjustments occurring within the private rental sector almost entirely to the changes in taxation policy, we present evidence of other ‘exogenous’ effects that helped amplify the trends and ‘panic’ the Hawke government into an ill‐considered reversal in September 1987 (viz, the reinstatement of full negative gearing on residential rental property). We conclude that this indirect approach to the provision of private rental accommodation via taxation policy is too indiscriminate to achieve national housing goals.     

BOT模式下公租房产权激励机制探讨

民间资本不愿意投资公租房项目的主要原因是项目投资回报率低。为了以BOT模式成功引入民间资本参与公租房投资建设,有必要建立相应的投资激励机制。产权激励是最主要的投资激励手段之一,因此本文在建立公租房项目收益函数的基础上,定量分析产权激励政策的激励效果,为促进我国公租房建设提供政策参考。     

Generation rent and the financialization of housing: a comparative exploration of the growth of the private rental sector in Ireland,the UK and Spain

Abstract

This article analyses the growth of the private rental sector over recent years through a comparative analysis of three classic homeowner societies: Ireland, the UK and Spain. The article argues that theories of financialization provide a useful framework for understanding ‘generation rent’. In particular, the cyclical nature of credit markets tends to undermine homeownership over the medium term. This contributes to and intensifies the wider set of policy changes associated with neoliberalism. The article also accounts for the divergent experiences of our three case study countries within their common trajectory. It does so through an analytical focus on the interaction between global aspects of financialization and more nationally based ones, such as mortgage markets, as well as on how both are mediated by national policy regimes. The article thus aims to contribute to the emerging literature seeking to explain ‘generation rent’ and explore its significance, and more broadly to political economy approaches to housing system change.     

The use of data from South Australia's rental tenancy tribunal for research and policy analysis: Issues of validity and efficacy

This paper examines the value for research and policy development of rental tenancy data collected by the South Australian Rental Tenancy Tribunal (RTT). The data held by the RTT are for South Australia only, but comparable organisations exist in a number of other states, such as New South Wales and Victoria. Lessons learned from South Australia could serve as a pilot for the development of a new (semi-) national framework for monitoring the private rental market.     

Is private rental an option for urban housing provision in Hungary?

By 1998, 91 percent of all housing units in Hungary were occupied by owners –an extremely high percentage by international standards. Today's Hungarian housing politicians, whose anti-rental convictions stem from the experience of the previous regime, tend to disregard arguments about the consequences of this bias: the negative impact on mobility, the creation of a rigid housing market (lack of adaptability to the housing market), hardships in addressing social problems, conflicts between generations (obligations borne by elder generations) as well as the `compulsory' purchase of housing by younger generations and the drain of subsidies. There is extensive evidence that current Hungarian regulations are hostile to rental housing. With subsidies channeled to the ownership sector (housing construction benefits, interest subsidies, local subsidies, employer subsidies) as well as tax relief (purchase of privately owned housing, savings-linked subsidies, imputed rents), it is more expensive for households to rent than to buy or build housing. This leads to a distorted economic structure and a distorted use of society's resources. A housing policy based on modern economic theory pursues neutral subsidy and tax policies concerning ownership. Thus, from an economic point of view, there is no reason to prefer owner-occupied housing to rental housing. This paper explains why the private and public rental sectors are so small. But at a deeper level, the question is why private rented housing exists at all. The paper also explores related questions: who tend to rent out their units, why, for how long and how much; and who tend to rent these units, why do they rent them, and at what prices? The key policy issue is to define the basic impediments to the sector's expansion. On this basis, a new housing policy program can be formulated.     

The significance of Swedish rental policy: Cost renting: Command economy versus the social market in comparative perspective

Recent literature on the Swedish rental system has missed the central significance of the Swedish system for international comparative purposes by neglecting the rent‐setting system and by unwittingly adopting an Anglo‐Saxon perspective. In this paper I attempt to rectify this by developing a comparative conceptual framework for the analysis of rental systems. I outline the post‐war history of the Swedish rent‐setting system, and argue that this constitutes an example of a unitary social rental market in the making, whereby public and private renting are integrated and public renting expands to become market leader for rent‐setting purposes. According to this model, public renting is allowed to compete with private renting such that its cost structure increasingly determines the rent levels on the rental market as a whole. This ‘market strategy’ constrasts to the Anglo‐Saxon model in which public renting is segregated from private renting, its growth suppressed (or even reversed through discounted sales) to prevent public renting competing with private renting and owner occupation. The ‘command policy’ uses the principles of the command economy to achieve the goal of sheltering both owner occupation and private renting from competition from a non‐profit form of rental housing. Other countries where a market policy has been adopted, such as Germany and the Netherlands, are also discussed.     

对中心城市公共租赁住房政策及实施的再评价

选取较早实施公共租赁住房的深圳,较具代表性的北京、重庆和上海四大中心城市,以其公租房政策演进为研究对象,分析比较自2010年6月以来各市在供给对象的范围、租金价格的确定、管理主体的确定等七个方面的发展变化;对中央政府公租房政策进行分析;研究公租房实施必须解决的现实问题,包括住房保障立法、资金的筹集和房源的筹集等方面。