Housing crowding in developing countries and willingness to pay for additional space

Accommodation and Tenuous Livelihoods in Johannesburg’s Inner City: the ‘Rooms’ and ‘Spaces’ Typologies

“…This was the finding, too of Follain et al (1982), Lim et al (1984) and UN-Habitat (2003). Sometimes the rooms and spaces occupied were considerably smaller than the minimum floor areas stipulated in the City of Johannesburg bylaws (see Section 1.2.2), and would be considered as overcrowding and thus illegal.…”

“…Indeed, the oft-mentioned overcrowding threshold of two persons per room seems to be readily overlooked by the urban poor (Follain et al, 1982). 100 Schlyter (2003) notes a study of rooms and spaces in Zimbabwe by Withers (1992) where only a third complained about space, and half even claimed to be satisfied with their accommodation.…”

Housing policy outcomes in global perspective: An application of discriminant analysis

“…Additional floor space has been known to be positively capitalized into rental values. Further evidence from Seoul shows that rental values will increase by 0.019 percent given an additional increase of 3.3 square meters of floor space (Follain et al, 1982). The implication of the foregoing is that floor area as an indicator of overcrowding is a significant housing policy outcome with a wide range of socioeconomic impacts.…”

“…Using Seoul, Korea as an example, Follain et al (1982) and Lira et al (1984) have shown that a one-percent increase in income will result in an increase of between 0.45 and 0.56 percent in the demand for additional living space. Furthermore, Follain et al (1982) demonstrate that Seoul households are willing to pay 21 percent of the rental value for an additional 3.3 square meters of floor space. Additional floor space has been known to be positively capitalized into rental values.…”

Preferential size of housing in Beijing

“…A limited number of articles in English have addressed the issue of housing size regulation. For example, Follain, Lim, and Renaud (1982) evaluated the willingness to pay for additional housing space by Korean households based on questionnaire data. They found that the willingness to pay for additional space is less than 25% of the actual value of the extra space.…”