[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ifs/ifsewp/15-05.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The right to buy social housing in Britain: a welfare analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Disney

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University of Sussex)

  • Guannan Luo

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies and City University of Hong Kong)

Abstract
We investigate the impact on social welfare of the UK policy introduced in 1980 by which public housing tenants (council housing in UK parlance) had the right to purchase their houses at heavily discounted prices. This was known as the Right to Buy (RTB) policy. Although this internationally-unique policy was the largest source of public privatization revenue in the UK and raised home ownership as a share of housing tenure by around 15 percentage points, the policy has been little analyzed by economists. We analyze the equilibrium housing policy of the public authority in terms of quality and quantity of publicly provided housing both in the absence and presence of a RTB policy. We examine the incentives to purchase using RTB for households with different wealth trajectories and differing qualities of public housing. We investigate the welfare effects of various adjustments to the policy, in particular (i) tighter restrictions on resale; (ii) reduced discounts on RTB sales; and (iii) returning the proceeds from RTB sale to local authorities to replace part of the public properties sold.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Disney & Guannan Luo, 2015. "The right to buy social housing in Britain: a welfare analysis," IFS Working Papers W15/05, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:15/05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/wps/WP201505.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ioannides, Yannis M., 1979. "Temporal risks and the tenure decision in housing markets," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 293-297.
    2. Nobuhiro Kiyotaki & Alexander Michaelides & Kalin Nikolov, 2011. "Winners and Losers in Housing Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 255-296, March.
    3. Rosen, Harvey S & Rosen, Kenneth T & Holtz-Eakin, Douglas, 1984. "Housing Tenure, Uncertainty, and Taxation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 66(3), pages 405-416, August.
    4. Hughes, Gordon & McCormick, Barry, 1981. "Do Council Housing Policies Reduce Migration between Regions?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 91(364), pages 919-937, December.
    5. Ortalo-Magne, Francois & Rady, Sven, 2002. "Tenure choice and the riskiness of non-housing consumption," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 266-279, September.
    6. Robst, John & Deitz, Richard & McGoldrick, KimMarie, 1999. "Income variability, uncertainty and housing tenure choice1," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 219-229, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dai Yuan Li & Cong Wei Xie & Shu Hao Chen & Xiu Xiang Zou, 2019. "Research on the Pricing of Shared Ownership Housing," Applied Economics and Finance, Redfame publishing, vol. 6(1), pages 30-44, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Disney, Richard & Luo, Guannan, 2017. "The Right to Buy public housing in Britain: A welfare analysis," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 51-68.
    2. Diaz-Serrano, Luis, 2004. "Labour Income Uncertainty, Risk Aversion and Home Ownership," IZA Discussion Papers 1008, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Luis Diaz-Serrano, 2003. "Earnings Uncertainty, Risk-Aversion and Homeownership," Economics Department Working Paper Series n135020.pdf, Department of Economics, National University of Ireland - Maynooth.
    4. Hilber, Christian A.L., 2005. "Neighborhood externality risk and the homeownership status of properties," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 213-241, March.
    5. Chung, Eui-Chul & Haurin, Donald R., 2002. "Housing choices and uncertainty: the impact of stochastic events," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 193-216, September.
    6. Ha, Sejeong & Hilber, Christian A.L. & Schöni, Olivier, 2021. "Do long-distance moves discourage homeownership? Evidence from England," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    7. Fan, Gang-Zhi & Pu, Ming & Deng, Xiaoying & Ong, Seow Eng, 2018. "Optimal portfolio choices and the determination of housing rents under housing market uncertainty," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 200-217.
    8. François Ortalo-Magné & Andrea Prat, 2016. "Spatial Asset Pricing: A First Step," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(329), pages 130-171, January.
    9. Todd Sinai & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2005. "Owner-Occupied Housing as a Hedge Against Rent Risk," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(2), pages 763-789.
    10. Michael Berlemann & Julia Freese, 2013. "Monetary policy and real estate prices: a disaggregated analysis for Switzerland," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 10(4), pages 469-490, December.
    11. Hilber, Christian A.L. & Liu, Yingchun, 2008. "Explaining the black-white homeownership gap: The role of own wealth, parental externalities and locational preferences," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 152-174, June.
    12. Diaz-Serrano, Luis, 2005. "On the negative relationship between labor income uncertainty and homeownership: Risk-aversion vs. credit constraints," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 109-126, June.
    13. Gathergood, John, 2011. "Unemployment risk, house price risk and the transition into home ownership in the United Kingdom," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 200-209, September.
    14. Rainer Schulz & Martin Wersing & Axel Werwatz, 2008. "Renting Versus Owning And The Role Of Income Risk: The Case Of Germany," ERES eres2008_248, European Real Estate Society (ERES).
    15. Murillo Campello & Erasmo Giambona, 2011. "Capital Structure and the Redeployability of Tangible Assets," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-091/2/DSF24, Tinbergen Institute.
    16. Rainer Schulz & Martin Wersing & Axel Werwatz, 2014. "Renting versus Owning and the Role of Human Capital: Evidence from Germany," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 754-788, May.
    17. Henrik Cronqvist & Florian Münkel & Stephan Siegel, 2014. "Genetics, Homeownership, and Home Location Choice," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 79-111, January.
    18. Ortalo-Magne, Francois & Rady, Sven, 2002. "Tenure choice and the riskiness of non-housing consumption," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 266-279, September.
    19. Diaz-Serrano, Luis, 2005. "Labor income uncertainty, skewness and homeownership: A panel data study for Germany and Spain," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 156-176, July.
    20. repec:esx:essedp:718 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Elder, Rafael & Pines, David, 1986. "Housing Prices and Tenure Choice in a Rational Expecations General Equilibrium Model with Production Risk," Foerder Institute for Economic Research Working Papers 275403, Tel-Aviv University > Foerder Institute for Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Housing policy; Right to Buy; social welfare;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • R38 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:15/05. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emma Hyman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifsssuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.