How does Housing Supply Satisfy the Differentiated Demand of Tenants and Homebuyers in the New Era? Evidence from Shanghai

Sun Cong; Liu Xia; Yao Lingzhen

doi:doi:10.16538/j.cnki.jfe.2019.01.005

Summary

Benefiting from the reform of the housing market, the living conditions and environment in Chinese cities have been greatly improved. However, while affirming the achievements, we should also see that the unbalanced development of housing rental and sale markets is becoming increasingly prominent. In order to achieve the goal of housing for all people, the Nineteenth National Congress of the CPC has taken the " encouraging both housing purchase and renting” as the general direction of housing market reform in the new era. To achieve the coordinated and balanced development of the two markets, the key is to promote the optimization of the supply structure of housing rental and sale markets, so as to satisfy the differentiated demand of tenants and homebuyers.　　On the basis of existing research, this paper employs a general hedonic method to quantitatively identify the different preferences of housing physical characteristics, location, neighborhood facilities and other factors between tenants and homebuyers. It takes Shanghai as a case city and uses the micro data of housing rental and resale transactions in the empirical analysis. The results indicate that there are significant differences in the housing demand between tenants and homebuyers. In terms of physical characteristics, renters prefer the practicability of housing while buyers prefer the comfort of housing; in terms of location, renters tend to downtown while buyers choose relatively scattered locations; in terms of neighborhood facilities, renters pay attention to leisure living facilities and public transport facilities, while buyers pay attention to public service supporting represented by the high-quality public education resources. In order to meet the difference demand of renting groups and purchase groups and promote the effective supply of housing, this paper gives a series of suggestions from three aspects: supply products, entities and channels. In terms of supply products, this paper constructs the suitability index of rental housing supply location and points out that the supply of rental houses should make use of housing stocks in the city center. As for the supply entities, this paper suggests that the government should fulfill its responsibility to provide affordable houses and incentivize all kinds of businesses and non-profit organizations to provide various housing products. Lastly, this paper points out that housing support should be provided through multiple channels.　　Compared with previous studies, from the perspective of research, this paper comprehensively considers the multi-level characteristics of housing demand, and pays attention to the effective identification of the differential demand between renting groups and purchase groups. As to research methods, the analysis of housing demand differences and the corresponding spatial research methods in this paper can be extended to other cities, and it provides references for supply and demand matching strategies adapting to the development status of the housing market in different cities.