How Far Do People Search for Housing? Analyzing the Roles of Housing Supply, Intra-household Dynamics, and the Use of Information Channels

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the spatial extent of the housing search. Using the concepts of mental map and awareness space, we argue that search space is affected by households' preferences, what is available on the housing market, and the use of information channels as well as their interactions. We hypothesize that households whose members disagree with each other have a larger search spaces than those whose members agree. Furthermore, the supply in the housing market and the use of different information channels may influence the search space differently for agreeing versus disagreeing households. We collected data from face-to-face interviews with 82 households (couples with or without children) who purchased a home in the New York City area between 2004 and 2009. The results support our hypotheses, suggesting that intra-household dynamics plays an important role in housing search.

The promises of big data and small data for travel behavior (aka human mobility) analysis

“…This practice has been applied to modeling both long-term residential location choices and short-term choices for shopping and recreational activities. It has been widely recognized that such an all-inclusive approach is unrealistic and likely does not conform to how people search in the real world ( Chen and Lin, 2012 ). Studies in transportation research have attempted to extend the discrete choice framework to also model the choice set generation process to account for some factors (e.g., attitudes, perceptions and elimination criteria) ( Ben-Akiva and Boccara, 1995 ).…”

Ontology-Based Approach for Neighborhood and Real Estate Recommendations

“…Note that the ontology is enriched entirely in Java with the JENA API 7 . The integration script can be easily adapted for populating other areas, and is publicly available at https://gitlab.liris.cnrs.fr/ fduchate/nareo.…”

“…More recently, location-based social networks have been exploited, mainly focused on recommending places such as restaurants and attractive areas [12,17]. Despite this trend, searching and finding an ideal accommodation, either for purchase or for rental, is still a very tiresome task [7,20]. And this is worse when users do not have prior knowledge about their future city of residence (e.g., case of job transfers).…”

Homebuyers and the representation of spatial markets by information providers

“…Housing decisions for multi-person households are inherently social and add to the complex picture of location perceptions (Levy and Lee, 2004, Levy et al, 2008, Chen and Lin, 2012. Conceptualisations and preferences are rarely formed in a vacuum, yet information influencing these preferences and therefore decisions may be flawed or partial.…”

“…Where estate agents are able to interpret households needs and suggest alternatives or manipulate binary distinctions about information and criteria, IBPSEs cannot. This places a greater emphasis on the household to know precisely their hard boundaries of housing characteristics at the earliest stage of the housing search, and may result in smaller searches (Chen and Lin, 2012). Herbert Simon's work on bounded rationality suggested that households do not typically possess this type of ability (Simon, 1984).…”