Younger people have low access to housing due to entry barriers due to social conditions (class/community/family), economic factor (low income, less saving and low potential to invest) and physical factors (new areas and city attracts youth whereas the old and traditional business/residential centers repels the young), like location of activities and amenities. Youth by themselves are not supplied with housing by the agencies due to location, housing stock viability and poor institutional arrangements. The cities with more rental or studio apartments becomes attractive to the youth with no flares attached to ownership. The high mobility among the youth also makes housing inaccessible since the cities are not prepare to supply housing to limited amount of youth. The cities where there are young workforce coupled with higher education systems encourages youth to occupy more housing stock. These are my observation being a urban planner with housing as specialization. I would get back if I can find some literature on the subject.

Thank very much on an insightful reply. As a novice researcher in the field of youth and housing I am still exploring this broad field. Beeing intriged with the concept of cohousing I am now trying to connect the dots and make some obvious links and generate questionairres . Future directions and aspirations of young people regarding their housing choices are acctualy what interests me the most. If there is any literature that you can think of I would be more than grateful. Currently am reading 'Housing choices and issues for young people in the UK' , Sue Heath, 2008. Hovewer my research will be Serbia-based and our legislative differs a great deal.

In India, there are some difficulties with rental housing. To avoid frequent changes in living places, they prefer to own a house. They check for the following basic / main expectations:

1. Distance from work spot

2. Distance from housing to a hospital or a clinic

3. Distance from work / housing / school for their children

4. As housing is a non-mobile property, they check for the proximity to their home town or the place where their parents or well wishers live (they would like to maintain personal contacts).

5. Persons who live in a different country try for housing to the choice of their parents or well wishers.

6. As the power cuts are frequent, they look for a place closer to a city.

These points are not due to a research but by my own experience.

Regards,

Dr.S.Ravindran

[email protected]

Your answer is very much appreciated, because not only it sumarizes many of the important factors, but also there is a connection to the local situation which gives me a great insight for the future research.

Prof. Ray Forrest in City University of Hong Kong is conducting a funded project titled "Housing and the Post Eighties Generation: Attitudes, Expectations and Trajectories".  You may refer to his work.

I've already came across Professor Forrest and his recent book about youth transitions to adulthood. It made certain things a lot clearer to me. And will make sure to check out the project you suggested. Thanks!

Jelena-

This was a recent headline that might interest you...while it may not qualify as "young buyers", it has some relevance to your question, in my opinion:

http://www.newstrategist.com/store/index.cfm/feature/83_15/homeownership-falls-to-record-low-in-the-30-to-34-age-group.cfm

Jelena-

I saw the headline for this paper, and was thinking about you and your question...hope that this helps you somewhat:

Bessant J., and Johnson, G., 2012, (on-line), 2013 (hard copy), ‘Dream on’: Declining Homeownership Among Young People in Australia? Housing, Theory and Society, pp. 177-192.

Hi Jelena,

We did a survey with about 620 young people in Hong Kong last year.  These young people were in the age group of 24-35. We wanted to test how younger generation  homebuyers in Hong Kong would react to government’s administrative controls that would apparently make housing price frozen at an affordable level at the expense of potential capital growth.  To achieve this, we create a hypothetical intervention measure by the government in the questionnaire. The hypothetical situation is to create a price cap that is set back to the year 2005 when the housing market in Hong Kong just recovered from the unprecedented catastrophe left behind by the SARS epidemic. Hence, this extreme policy variable asks the respondents whether they would consider buying a residential flat if an extreme government intervention were to be in place to push the clock back to the year 2005 and to freeze the housing price level at the point forever.  We found that this extreme policy has the least appeal to wealthier families with children who rent in the private sector. It tends to have a greater impact among lower income females or families currently renting public housing.  We are still finalising the outcomes.  Hope this helps.

Dear Ling, 

thank you for your answer. I'm currently conducting housing satisfaction survey in Serbia, but am looking to draw parallels and recommendations from Shanghai and presumably Hong Kong. 

Serbia is post-socialist transitional country, which went trough privatization of 90% of housing stock and didn't have any major housing projects ever since. Homeownership is widely present and culturally accepted. It means that younger generations have to rely on the family recourses in resolving their residential autonomy questions. 

My idea is to investigate the formulation of rental housing models that are aimed at younger generation and are taking into consideration residential satisfaction and preferences of this group of users. 

Will follow your updates for further information. 

Many thanks,

Jelena

This is a topical issue, good luck in this !! 

It just came to my mind that you may also want to consider using AHP model to test the relative importance of each factors affecting housing choice.  But the questionnaire would be quite complicated to administer.  Anyway, good luck, hopefully we could have some comparative studies in the future. 

Dear Jelena,

Young people expectation for housing is influenced by the new way of living, mainly the use of technology. I recommend you this TED talk on how real estate housing is reshaped because of how young people want to live. It's by Gunnar Branson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ6irnso40c.

Godd luck!

Dear Costin, 

thank you so much for sharing this video here. Personally, I also feel that new research agenda is needed to address the young people's problems and (let me quote this video) 'desire lines' in housing area. Good example is AirBnB model of shared economy housing and variety it offers.

Unfortunately legislative machinery is far behind the actual market need (at least in my country).