Moving Out of Home Ownership in Later Life: The Influence of the Family and Housing Careers

Abstract

Home ownership is often regarded as the preferred housing tenure; however, situations in parallel life-course careers might make moving to a rental home necessary or attractive to home owners. Retrospective data from the SHARELIFE survey were used to study the short-and long-term impact of situations and disruptions in the family and housing careers on leaving home ownership at middle (45-64) and older ages (65 -80) in Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands. We found that directly after separation and widowhood, the likelihood of leaving home ownership was the greatest. However, more than 10 years after separation and widowhood, individuals were still significantly more likely to leave ownership than those in their first marriage. Furthermore, late first childbirth and early first-time home ownership were associated with lower chances of leaving home ownership. We conclude that situations and changes in family and housing careers have both a short-term and a long-term impact on the likelihood of moving out of home ownership.

“Phasic” metropolitan settlers: a phase-based model for the distribution of households in US metropolitan regions

“…Changes in socioeconomic characteristics of households, such as income, marital status, household size, and composition, often coincide with changes in households' needs and housing consumption behaviors (Dieleman, 2001;Dieleman, Clark, & Deurloo, 2000;Herbers, Mulder, & Mòdenes, 2014;Poppe, 2013;Skobba, Bruin, & Carswell, 2013). In residential mobility and housing choice literature, the term "housing consumption" has often been used to represent actual consumption of the bundle of housing services.…”

Union dissolution and migration

“…Hence, the presumption is that spatial mobility following union dissolution is largely motivated by the practical need to find a new place of residence within tight spatial, temporal, and financial constraints (see Feijten andvan Ham 2007, 2013). These constraints become clear from evidence indicating that union dissolution leads to elevated risks of moving out of home ownership and into lowerquality housing (Feijten 2005;Dewilde 2008Dewilde , 2009Dewilde and Stier 2014;Herbers, Mulder, and Mòdenes 2014). The divorced also tend to change residence more often and over shorter distances than otherwise similar married couples (Feijten andvan Ham 2007, 2013).…”

Britain's new housing precariat: housing wealth pathways out of homeownership

“…This questions Herbers et al (2014) earlier findings that a loss of partner among elderly homeowners leads to drop-out from homeownership in Denmark, the Netherlands and Spain. The findings presented here suggest that the British safety nets of private life insurance (mandatory at most mortgage lenders), dependent's pension or guardian's payments help people to cope financially with the situation of losing the income of the partner.…”

“…The findings presented here suggest that the British safety nets of private life insurance (mandatory at most mortgage lenders), dependent's pension or guardian's payments help people to cope financially with the situation of losing the income of the partner. On the other hand, such a safety net for divorces and separations does not exist and confirms earlier analyses (Herbers et al, 2014;Lersch & Vidal, 2014). Divorce insurance has recently been introduced to the UK financial market to cover legal expenses of a divorce (The Economist, 2011), but not the transaction costs and further financial problems surrounding a break-up.…”

“…The exceptional circumstances of the financial crisis brought the edges of homeownership into the limelight, though it has always affected some mortgagors (Clark, 2013;Searle, 2012). Along these lines, falling out of homeownership is not a new phenomenon and has been studied extensively (Dieleman, Clark, & Deurloo, 1995;Herbers, Mulder, & M odenes, 2014;Lersch & Vidal, 2014). New are rather the multiple ways at the edges of homeownership such as temporary renting, extending mortgages past retirement age and extensive mortgage management.…”