The search for rental housing can be a very stressful and complex process for veterans with service-connected disabilities. This process requires the evaluation of different factors, such as one's credit score, housing costs in relation to income and employment status, space requirements, type of housing structure, quality preferences, and neighborhood preferences. The purpose of this study was to investigate and document the housing search and occupancy experiences of veterans with disabilities. The study describes the current rental housing situation of these veterans and examines their satisfaction with their current housing. The contextual framework of this study was developed based on Morris and Winter's (1975, 1978) theory of housing adjustment which identifies the key role of housing satisfaction as a measure to evaluate housing against housing norms and specialized needs. Issues associated with veterans with disabilities and their experience with accessibility, discrimination and Fair Housing Act provisions were integrated into the analysis of satisfaction. Three major hypotheses were tested. Data collection occurred employing a mixed-mode survey design via a self-administered on-line survey and interviews, between October 9, 2012 and February 2, 2013. Eighty-three surveys were collected through job fairs and veteran community sponsored events, the Virginia Wounded Warrior Program, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and other organizations. Descriptive statistics (frequencies, percentages, and means) were used to provide profiles of the respondents, including demographic information, search process, current housing situation, accessible features, satisfaction with current housing, awareness of the FHAA, and military experience. One-way ANOVA, t-test, and Chi-Square were used to analyze associations when testing the three hypotheses. The study results demonstrate that these veterans could benefit from increased awareness of the provisions of the FHAA. Further, findings suggest there is a need to educate veterans about the value of filing formal complaints about housing discrimination in order to potentially reduce the frequency of housing discrimination behaviors against veterans with service-connected disabilities. OEF/OIF veterans with trauma-related injuries were more likely to be dissatisfied with their housing and more likely to have experienced discrimination during the housing search process. The findings from this research are useful to veterans looking for rental housing, property managers looking to attract and maintain veteran renters, and organizations looking to assist veterans with housing related issues. / Ph. D.

This study investigated factors affecting housing finance supply in Nigeria. Housing finance is a major factor determining the quality and tenure of housing consumption, the overall financial portfolio of the public and the stability and effectiveness of the financial system. In both developed and emerging economies, sovereign governments have intervened in the markets by setting up institutions characterised by a significant degree of regulation and segmentation from the rest of the financial markets and very often with governments providing subsidised housing finance. Attempts were made to develop an empirical model to reveal the underlying factors affecting housing finance in Nigeria. Time series data from sampled Universal Money Deposit Banks (UMDBs) balance sheets between 2003 and 2007 were used to assess the ability of the financial institutions to engage in long-term lending. Additional instruments in form of questionnaire, for the sectoral allocation of loans and advances by these financial institutions were employed to gather information from Corporate Banking / Loans and Advances Managers coupled with unstructured interviews. Supplementary questionnaires were directed to the users of housing finance at the household level as control for validity to the research findings. Applying a multiple regression approach, the model identified that housing finance supply in Nigeria is significantly driven by clusters of factors related to share capital and the reserves of the financial institutions. It is closely observed that housing finance models in the developed economies, which are largely financed by deposit liabilities, cannot be wholly adopted in the emerging economies. The implication for practice therefore is that financial institutions in the emerging economies must adequately increase their capital base for effective housing finance supply and introduce mortgage products with long-term tenure to actively mobilise resources for mortgage lending.

The following report details research and analysis in order to assess the background market and market-based feasibility of the development of efficiency apartment units in the central Austin Area. It explores the potential and opportunities of reducing the size of apartments and promoting efficiency apartment unit development as a strategy to improve housing affordability for the Generation Y (Gen Y) population while taking advantage of urban redevelopment investments near Austin’s main TODs. The body of this study will discuss: (1) Generation Y and its impact on Austin’s housing market; (2) concepts and facts related to housing affordability; (3) strategies used by the city of Austin to promote infill development and existing transit oriented development sites; and (4) an overview of key housing development strategies and the real estate development process, including market analysis and absorption forecast under current housing market conditions. The study evaluates the implications of a significant demand for less expensive and smaller alternative housing products for a growing population group near downtown Austin. This report may contributes to the policy discussion about different approaches to housing affordability and offers an assessment guide for new housing development opportunities for a diverse range of city residents. / text

After the 2008 Global Financial Crash, Ireland’s neoliberal housing policy turned again to housing financialisation as focus lay upon the attraction of corporate investors in order to revive the housing market. The result was a swift return to housing price rises but this came with ever growing homelessness and housing precarity as REITs and other corporate investors' influence on the housing market grew. Affordability has become a common framing as one of the key issues which Ireland’s housing system is currently facing, by the state and researchers alike. However, much of this research frames housing issues and policies as being objectively defined. Social constructionism holds that housing issues and policy are heavily subjective, where material conditions are subjectively negotiated among competing narratives steeped in ideology and vested interests in an attempt to create a dominant narrative. This research, building upon a social constructionism approach, has analysed the negotiated process within the affordability discourse of Ireland. The key findings are that the state’s affordability narrative remains heavily linked to a commodified, private sector led housing provision which holds to its traditional liberal welfare regime. This narrative is reflected in the private sector’s narrative, which frames the state as a facilitator of the efficient private sector, which within a housing system free of state barriers, can create affordability. However, as more and more face into greater housing precarity as unaffordability grows, a counter narrative framing state built public housing, supported by the non-profit sector as key to reducing the reliance on a greedy private sector and in so doing, achieving affordability. As this movement grows, spearheaded by the increasing threat of Sinn Féin to parliamentary power and the growth of the trade union led Raise the Roof campaign movement, this counter narrative has grown in power. Although limited, there has been a shift in the state’s narrative which reflects that of the counter narrative where the state frames the need for a greater direct state role in affordable housing provision and state intervention as a control mechanism on the negative effects of the profit motive of the private sector. Although this can not be said to be a shift in welfare regime, it highlights the negotiated process of narratives within affordability discourse.

Evidence from various countries over the past two decades proves that swings in house prices have been concomitant with financial instability. The history of financial crises shows that the six biggest banking crises in advanced economies were accompanied by housing busts. Despite the abundance of literature on the forces behind the financial crisis, and in particular studies investigating the connections between financial stability and disturbances in the real estate market, fundamental questions still wait for convincing answers, such as: (i) To what extent is regional heterogeneity in property price increases reflected in dissimilarity in the evolution of credit default? (ii) What role do borrower-related factors such as housing affordability and household indebtedness, and financial market-related factors such as financial developments, play on the growth of bad loans as a main concern for banking sector? (iii) To which extent do banks’ lending behaviour and property prices undermine the stability of the banking sector, and what are the directions of causality between credit defaults, property prices and banks’ lending behaviour? The goal of this thesis is to investigate these issues and explain the practical implications of the findings. This thesis contains three empirical essays. The first essay explores the nexus between house prices and non-performing loans (NPLs), concentrating on the extent to which geographical variations in house prices are translated into regional variations in credit defaults. The stochastic dominance approach has been used for this purpose, with 372 individual US banks. The stochastic dominance analyses disclose symmetric behaviour between NPLs and the scale of house price increments. The essay is further extended by employing Arellano and Bond’s (1991) GMM model to explore the effect of GDP, unemployment rates, lending interest rates and house prices on the growth of NPLs. The outcomes of the GMM estimations reveal a high explanatory power of economic growth, unemployment and lending interest rates on NPLs. In an additional analysis, a generalised panel threshold model is estimated to check for the presence of a threshold point, above which different impacts of house prices might be found. The threshold model specifications provide a threshold point, in relation to which two different impacts of house prices on the evolution of NPLs are estimated. A general consensus in the literature attributes credit defaults to a wide-ranging spectrum of drivers that take into consideration borrower-related factor, lender-related factors and factors related to financial and real estate markets. The second essay attempts to answer the second question mentioned above, by investigating the impact of borrower-related factors, lender-related factors and financial market-related factors in driving NPLs. The impact of these factors on the evolution of impaired loans is explored by estimating fixed effect models then the analysis is extended to dynamic models using the GMM procedure on an annual balanced panel dataset. Household vulnerability, financial developments and housing affordability are found to be significant contributors to the growth of NPLs. The interaction mechanism between the real estate market and the financial system has often been blamed for being the root of financial crises, through the accumulation of housing market bubbles that leads to the ultimate collapse of the financial markets. The third essay, using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag technique, looks for the presence of cointegrating relationships between mortgage defaults, property prices and bank lending in Hong Kong. Our findings reveal evidence of cointegrating relationships between bank lending, property prices and mortgage defaults in the long term, which governs the correction mechanism between these variables. These outcomes call for more effort to be devoted to maintaining a balanced relationship between these factors. The essay also finds evidence of short-term dynamics between these variables. Importantly, loan-to-value is found to play the most effective role in curbing mortgage default risk in the portfolios of the Hong Kong banking sector.

Submitted by Guilherme Lisboa Ramirez (guilherme.ramirez@uol.com.br) on 2013-02-27T17:11:14Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Guilherme_Ramirez_vf.pdf: 937329 bytes, checksum: ad15d191716d7337747bcc3f83b75fa0 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Vera Lúcia Mourão (vera.mourao@fgv.br) on 2013-02-27T17:30:52Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Guilherme_Ramirez_vf.pdf: 937329 bytes, checksum: ad15d191716d7337747bcc3f83b75fa0 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-02-27T17:58:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Guilherme_Ramirez_vf.pdf: 937329 bytes, checksum: ad15d191716d7337747bcc3f83b75fa0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-01-29 / The analysis of the evolution of housing affordability indexes is important in monitoring variations in the capability of a household to purchase a house. The methodology used in this study allows the analysis of housing affordability indexes for different income classes, once it takes into account the whole distribution of household income and house prices, since they have different skewness. The analysis of the Brazilian market under this methodology has shown a decrease in housing affordability in recent years, due to a steeper rise in house prices when compared to the combined effect of household income variations and the loosening of credit constraints. / A análise da evolução dos indicadores de housing affordability permite acompanhar o comportamento do poder de compra de um imóvel. A metodologia utilizada nesta dissertação, ao considerar toda a distribuição da renda domiciliar e do preço dos imóveis, uma vez que as mesmas possuem assimetrias diferentes, possibilita analisar estes indicadores para diferentes segmentos da população. A aplicação desta metodologia para o mercado brasileiro possibilitou observar que a capacidade de compra se reduziu nos últimos anos devido, principalmente, ao aumento do preço dos imóveis a uma taxa maior do que a variação da renda combinada com a flexibilização das condições de credito imobiliário.

Over the last two decades, biophilic design and green architecture have been gaining moremomentum throughout the world, to combat climate change and promote sustainability.Biophilic design states that humans have an innate connection with nature, and thatconnection invokes human well-being, productivity, coexistence with nature, andbiodiversity. It is estimated that by 2050, over 65% of people will live in urban settings, which should incentivize biophilic design oriented urban planning. Introducing biophilic design aspects in neighbourhoods can create environments for betterconnection between residents, and with nature. This research evaluates the affordability ofbiophilic designed apartments and if there is a correlation between the biophilic designintensity and the price tag. Research also aims to review the importance and barriers of biophilic design apartments among urban oriented academics and architects using semi-structured interviews. This paper intends to fill a research gap and provide a comprehensive understanding of affordability of biophilic designed apartments, in varying geographicalareas. The analysis was done in three steps of mixed methodology using a housing affordabilityindex, a biophilic pattern score and interviews. The findings highlight the crisis of housingunaffordability, specifically proving biophilic design apartments are severely unaffordableusing quantitative research. The study also established neutral correlation between thebiophilic patterns intensity and apartment affordability index of the selected buildingsamples. Thus, there is further research needed to find the causes of housing unaffordability,which directly equates to the health and quality of people. The research gave insights onreasoning behind low prevalence of biophilic design apartments. To summarise, the studyhighlights an important issue of unaffordability that needs to be addressed by stakeholderslike the government, planning committee, architects, and real estate developers.

The thesis aims to map the social housing system in Prague and to contribute to evaluating effectiveness of the policy. The study analyses 15 city districts of Prague, focusing on the conditions and process for selection of tenants. Currently, social housing is not regulated by law and therefore city districts are legally autonomous in decision making. The thesis is explorative, and studies policy documentation (primarily policy of city districts dealing with management stock of dwellings). I then carried out semi-structured interviews with actors of social housing (social services users, social workers of shelter services and officials of city districts). The study pursues a deeper understanding of issues connected with housing needs and the role of social housing as a solution to housing problems, as well as barriers which limit the related process of securing housing. There are two groups of condition (general and specific) which city districts use to regulate social housing. General conditions comprise citizenship, permanent residence, non-ownership of residential property, non-participation in privatization, non-existence of debts to the city (or repayment) and income limits or condition for receiving social benefits. Next, city districts regulate renting a flat by specific conditions, for...

近年來，國內房價飆漲，自民國93年以來國內房價所得比自民國93年第1季為4.7倍成長至民國103年第1季為7.51倍，尤其台北市自民國93年第1季為6.14倍成長至民國103年第1季為14.6倍最為嚴重，住宅負擔能力成為社會大眾所關注之議題。本文探討住宅負擔能力與購屋自備款資金來源種類互動關係，以及房價或租金負擔與消費行為間關聯性。 對於購屋自備款資金來源與負擔能力，由二元羅吉斯特迴歸模型分析不同購屋自備款資金來源選擇與負擔能力之關係，再採複迴歸模型分析購屋自備款資金來源對購屋負擔能力造成之影響。透過二元羅吉斯特迴歸模型分析，在購屋自備款資金來源無須或須償還選擇中，以不同購屋者選擇之有顯著影響因子分別為購屋區位、家戶月所得、貸款負擔率。複迴歸模型分析影響貸款負擔率，顯著影響因子分別為購屋區位、購屋面積、家戶月所得、購屋決策者年齡、購屋自備款資金來源。 另外，房價或租金負擔與消費行為關聯性分析，本文將消費行為分為居住及生活行為，以複迴歸模型分析影響因子，再以次數分配分析減少生活支出項目及影響程度，發現因購屋或租屋支出，而減少生活支出項目，相同支出為基本日常開支、休閒娛樂(如旅遊)等2項；不同支出項目，購屋者為減少投資理財及儲蓄，租屋者以購物及奢侈品支出減少，兩者消費行為不同，購屋者較重視投資理財及儲蓄；然由影響程度大小觀察，得知租屋者影響程度較大，其經濟能力通常較差。 / In recent few years, the housing price grows rapidly. Since 2004, the growth of housing price was 470% in the first quarter of 2004 and 751% in the first quarter of 2014. In Taipei city, the growth of housing price was 614% in the first quarter of 2004, and it was the worst with growth rate of 1460% in the first quarter of 2014. Therefore, the ability of mortgage loan is the top focusing topic around the country. In our study we discusses the association of the ability of mortgage loan and the source of down payment; the association between housing price versus buying consumption behavior and rental fee versus buying consumption behavior. In our study, we discuss three topics. First, the association of the ability of mortgage loan and the source of down payment is analyzed by using logistic regression. In the logistic regression, the response variable is the down payment with or without second mortgage. The significant variables for impacting the sources of down payment are the location of house, the monthly income of household, the percentage of mortgage loan to household income. Second, the impact of mortgage loan is analyzed by multivariate regression. In multivariate regression for the impacting of mortgage loan, the significant variables are the location of house, the size of house, the monthly income of household, the age of housing buyer, and the source of down payment. Third, housing price or rent burdens associated with consumption behavior analysis，This article will be divided into residential consumption behavior and lifestyle behaviors. The analyzing methods are multiple regression and frequency distribution analysis. The most important finding is that people with mortgage loan or rental fee have lower down their living expense. The same expenditures for these two groups (homeowner and renter) are grocery expenditures and entertainment expenditures. The difference expenditures are the reduction of investment and savings for homeowners; the reduction of shopping expenditures and purchasing luxury products for renter. The buying powers are different between homeowners and renters. The homeowners are more focus on the investments and savings. However, the buying power has more impact for renters, who have poor economic status.

Martina Mikeszová : PHD DISSERTATION - HOUSING MARKET AND RISK OF HOMELESSNESS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC. ABSTRACT The PhD dissertation focuses on the theme of loss of permanent housing together with the problematic of housing affordability in the Czech Republic. In the first part, the objective is to identify the types of households potentially at risk of being unable to afford housing since 2000, and to trace the development of regional differences in the percentage of at-risk households in the Czech Republic. In the regard to the end of deregulation process in recent years, the analysis of housing (un)affordability of "market" rent housing shows the possible social consequences of the process. Owing to the absence of useful aggregate data on incomes and expenditures for different household types in the regions of the Czech Republic, the alternative data sources and the simulation methodology for measuring housing affordability which combines available regional wage statistics and data on market rents were used. The results indicate that the general risk of being unable to afford rental housing and regional differences in housing affordability are both decreasing. Not only the stagnation of market rent growth related to the growth of household income is behind the development. The main reason is the fact that...