Understanding Housing Affordability

Housing affordability is a multi-faceted, complex issue. Concentration on just one aspect of the issue – be it housing supply, land supply, interest rates, construction costs or migration – will miss important aspects of why house prices vary in different locations at different times. In this briefing paper, we illustrate how differing facets of the housing market combine to produce diverse housing outcomes.

Common sense and observation of recent trends indicates that house prices reflect variables such as: population and migration, land availability (which is affected by both geographical and planning constraints), construction costs and financial factors (credit availability and interest rates). Government-funded rent and mortgage subsidies will also affect how much people can afford for housing and so will affect prices. These factors are included here in a simple framework, providing a systematic approach to understand house price outcomes. The approach is based on, and extends, published papers by the author as well as other influential papers on housing markets. 

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