文章基本信息

标题：Measuring Housing Affordability: Looking Beyond the Median
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作者：Quan Gan ; Robert J. Hill
期刊名称：Discussion Papers / School of Business, University of New South Wales
出版年度：2008
卷号：2008
出版社：Sydney
摘要：We draw a distinction between the concepts of purchase affordability (whether a household is able to borrow enough funds to purchase a house) and repayment affordability (the burden imposed on a household of repaying the mortgage). We operationalize this distinction in the context of a new methodology for constructing affordability measures that draws on the value-at-risk concept and takes account of the whole distribution of household income and house prices rather than just the median. Empirically we find that the distinction between purchase and repayment affordability can be pronounced. In the Sydney prime mortgage market over the period 1996 to 2006, repayment affordability deteriorated very significantly while purchase affordability remained quite stable. This difference can be attributed to the loosening of credit constraints in the mortgage market which it seems has carried through primarily into higher house prices. We also consider how median house-price-to-income ratio measures of affordability can be extended to take account of the whole distribution of income and house prices. We propose a new quantile based measure which indicates that the housing affordability problem may be systematically worse than suggested by standard median measures.
关键词：Housing affordability; Affordability at risk; Affordable limit; Mortgage market; Price-to-income ratio