Contact: Professor Moira Munro

Housing is probably the most substantial and significant purchase that most people make. The housing market involves considerable uncertainty, having been subject to rapid price fluctuations in recent years. This project is designed to explore the factors that influence people’s housing market decisions. Two surveys are to be conducted. The first is a semi-structured interview survey with a total of 90 people who are currently active in the housing market, including both trading owner-occupiers and first time buyers. The interviews will explore the factors respondents take into account when making the decision to move and how they make their housing choices.

The second study will be a structured sample survey of over 800 owners. It will permit examination of the differences between those who have decided to move rather than stay put, as well as providing larger scale evidence on attitudes and behaviour in the housing market. The sample will be randomly drawn across three quotas; namely those who had bought for the first time in the previous three years, those who had bought for the second or subsequent time in the last three years and those who had not moved.

The research will be carried out in two contrasting housing markets, Glasgow, which had relatively slower price rises in the 1980s and was a fairly stable housing market in the early 1990s, and Bristol, which underwent the more dramatic rise and fall of the boom and slump in house prices experienced in the South-west.

The research will provide new information about the decision-processes involved in housing market choice and reveal the extent to which changes in the family, perceptions of particular neighbourhoods and assumptions about life-style interact with rational judgements of advantage and disadvantage in market terms in this area.

Other Researchers Involved in the Project:

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