Steven Rowley

Housing Market Failure in a Booming Economy

This paper presents national data and two case studies investigating the links between housing market failure and the context of Australias recent resource mining boom. It demonstrates how unprecedented international demand for mineral resources resulted in critical, local housing issues in mining communities. We conclude that without careful strategic planning and understanding of the economic and social role of housing, international market dynamics can create local housing situations that are vulnerable to market and social failures. While this paper highlights the challenges inherent in managing housing issues in Australia during a mining boom, there are likely to be lessons which can be applied in international settings. These challenges include the diversity in scale, cyclical and often unpredictable nature of booms; differences in housing policy and institutional arrangements across jurisdictions and the importance of leadership in growth management and planning.

The Predictive Performance of Multilevel Models of Housing Sub-markets: A Comparative Analysis

Much of the housing sub-market literature has focused on establishing methods that allow the partitioning of data into distinct market segments. This paper seeks to move the focus on to the question of how best to model sub-markets once they have been identified. It focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of multilevel models as a technique for modelling sub-markets. The paper uses data on housing transactions from Perth, Western Australia, to develop and compare three competing sub-market modelling strategies. Model 1 consists of a city-wide ‘benchmark’; model 2 provides a series of sub-market-specific hedonic estimates (this is the ‘industry standard’) and models 3 and 4 provide two variants on the multilevel model (differentiated by variation in the degrees of spatial granularity embedded in the model structure). The results suggest that the more granular multilevel specification enhances empirical performance and reduces the incidence of non-random spatial errors.

Bridging the Gap between Housing Stress and Financial Stress: The Case of Australia

In recent decades, housing affordability has been increasingly linked to household financial outcomes where high housing costs relative to income are perceived to negatively affect financial well-being. However, the traditional measure of housing affordability in Australia is housing stress, which is subject to widespread criticism as an inadequate representation of overall financial stress. This methodological paper first determines the extent to which housing stress correlates with experiences of financial stress and, second, demonstrates ways in which the measure can be modified to deliver a more reliable indication of how housing costs affect financial well-being. The study contributes to the international literature by showing how the use of longitudinal data can improve the measure of housing stress providing a more accurate assessment of the relationship between housing costs and financial well-being.

THE IMPACT OF LAND SUPPLY ON HOUSING AFFORDABILITY IN THE PERTH METROPOLITAN REGION

Abstract A number of commentators and policy makers believe that a potential solution to housing affordability is available through large scale release of newly subdivided land on the urban periphery. The argument follows that releasing more land increases supply and, through market forces, leads to lower new land and house prices. This will, in turn, lead to improved affordability within the stock of existing houses. Despite this view, there has been very little empirical research investigating how large scale land release on the urban fringe actually affects housing affordability. This question has important implications for both planning policy and affordability within local housing markets, but also within the wider aggregate urban housing market. This paper explores this issue by quantifying land release in a number of Perth (Western Australia) Metropolitan suburbs and comparing the extent of land release with changes in land and house prices. Our analysis indicates only a weak relationship between land supply and rates of house price growth, concluding that the drivers of housing affordability are far more complex than the single issue of land release.

A native-visitor in Western Australia: an account of an insider-outsider

Purpose – This study aims to apply confirmatory personal introspection (CPI) to illuminate the experiences of the authors as partial native-visitors to Western Australia. The native-visitor is the tourist who is able to see beyond Urry’s shallow conception of the Tourist Gaze through their lengthy immersion as “insiders” in the destination’s culture. In this paper, the experiences of two immigrants, the authors, to Western Australia illustrate the different perspectives of the Tourist Gaze 4.0. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses CPI, as this is a more reliable method of uncovering a traveler’s experiences than subjective personal introspection because CPI uses additional data sources such as written historical records and photographs for confirming the researcher’s accounts. In this study, accounts of both authors alongside photographs are used to both confirm and contrast their individual experiences. Findings – The paper demonstrates the varied forms of the tourist gaze, with an emphasis on th...

Spatial and Temporal Patterns in Housing Supply: A Descriptive Analysis

Abstract This paper provides an analysis of spatial and temporal patterns in housing supply in Australia over the period 2005–06 to 2015–16. It shows that by international standards, per capita housing supply is very strong in Australia. However, housing supply is concentrated in areas with relatively high prices. Over time, some changes in the geography of housing supply are emerging, including a closer match between the supply of units and “job-rich” locations. This paper concludes by discussing how understanding patterns of new supply can help policymakers determine interventions that increase housing supply’s impact to alleviate inflationary pressures, hence improving housing affordability.