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This paper examines the social construction of house size expectations in two national panel datasets: German Socio Economic Panel Study (GSOEP) and the British Household Panel Study (BHPS). More specifically, it tests the aspiration spiral theory and positional good theory using data on housing/life satisfaction and house size judgements. In both countries, it finds substantial evidence that the current space expectations of individuals who have 'upsized' depends on the level of living space they experienced in the past year. For downsizers, however, the evidence in support of the aspiration spiral theory is weaker. In terms of the positional good theory, this paper finds no consistent evidence that an individual's space expectations are influenced by those around them. In both countries, the paper tests for two reference groups – the average level of living space in the region, and the mean size of the largest decile of houses in the region – and neither are found to be significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a number of welfare reforms have been introduced in the UK by Conservative-led governments. The most high profile of these is Universal Credit (UC), which is currently being rolled out across the country. A key feature of UC is a change in the way the income-related housing allowance for social housing tenants (Housing Benefit) is administered, as under UC, it is paid directly to tenants (direct payment), who are responsible for paying their rent. This represents a step change for them as for more than 30 years landlord payment has been the norm in the UK. There has been little research into direct payment. This paper seeks to address this gap in knowledge by presenting the key findings of an initiative designed to trial direct payment. It finds that many tenants experienced difficulties on direct payment. Reflecting this, landlords' arrears rose markedly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group-build housing developments can bring together the cost and customisation benefits regularly attributed to self-build housing with a communitarian ethos associated with ‘intentional’ communities. This paper presents an initial examination of the rationale, motivations and social experiences of group-build housing from Germany, where over half of all new homes are produced independently from volume-build developers. The paper aims, firstly, to test the hypothesis that group-build delivers general ‘community’ benefits; secondly, to contribute to an understanding of the processes leading to successful schemes; and lastly, to demonstrate that by making individual home building dependent on the success of a larger group, collective interests can prevail over personal pursuit. This research draws attention to the motivations, the social experiences through the development process and the social legacy – aspects of particular interest for policy-makers as well as prospective builders – of group-build housing projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through narrative interviews with younger adults and their parents, this paper explores how the housing transitions of younger adults, both within the rental sector and into homeownership, are shaped through intergenerational intra-family support in Germany’s society of renters. Our findings highlight the profound qualitative differences between regular transfers for establishing and retaining residential independence in the rental sector and inter vivos gifts for house purchase. Where the former support type is given and taken unconditionally, transfers for house purchase follow a different logic and carry different meanings. Being a necessary condition for property acquisition at young age, they have the power to completely rebalance family relations and undermine younger adults’ autonomy accordingly. In an aggregate perspective, our study further suggests increasing socio-spatial inequalities within the younger generation which run along both class and spatial origin, sharply dividing the housing market opportunities of ‘original Berliners’ and those who have moved to the city from more affluent regions in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the work of the architect Ernst May with regard to self-build housing initiatives during the Weimar Republic (1918-33).Among the many attempts to assuage the housing shortage in early 20th-century Germany, self-build housing initiatives were the last resort, emerging only in times of dire economic crisis. During the hyper-inflation years from 1919 through to 1924 and then with the onset of the world depression in 1930, the state encouraged housing authorities to develop self-build strategies, along with experimentsin 'recovered' vernacular building materials and techniques. This paper examines the work of the architect Ernst May with regard to these initiatives. May's career is unique in its productivity,in the inventiveness of his strategies and the relentlessness with which he pursued economising measures. At the same time, it is typical in the types of self-build experiments he developed to deal with the crisis. Further, the paper traces through May's career the formative impact of the political and social context that shaped and delimited the building programme, its meaning and ultimate utility to society self-build programmes in the Weimar years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper describes the results of a comparative cost analysis of four housing projects in Germany. A common characteristic of all projects is the central importance of mutual neighborly support to meet the demand for the assistance of older residents. All projects share some common architectural features and infrastructural characteristics. Furthermore, in each housing project, some form of support by social workers takes place. Using a propensity score matching approach, we compare for the first time systematically the costs for support of older people in mutual support based housing projects with a control group of people living in conventional settings. Our results, based on a sample of more than 700 residents, point not only to improvements in living satisfaction, but indicate also a huge potential for socioeconomic cost savings. This can partly be explained by better development of residents' health status. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Housing costs have been increasing rapidly in Germany in recent years. Given the importance of housing for the elderly, one may expect many to be forced to dedicate ever-larger shares of their income to housing costs. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), we examine how changes in housing costs between 1996 and 2017 have affected income poverty among Germany's over-65s. Our results reveal that higher costs have indeed contributed to increased income poverty in old age in that period. Our pooled probit regression models as applied to Germany's elderly show that increased housing costs mean tenants, homeowners with outstanding mortgages, single-person households and people with migration background all suffer a higher risk of poverty, while the risk remains lower for outright homeowners. Since the relative income position of the elderly is expected to further deteriorate in future, our study suggests a need for policy action to avoid a worsening in figures for old-age income poverty in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although previous research shows that family dynamics and parental socioeconomic status influence the timing of young adults' first entry into homeownership, much less is known about how the role of family factors may vary across countries with different housing systems. In this article, we use panel survey data from Britain and Germany to compare how family life course careers and parental socioeconomic background influence young adults' initial entry into homeownership in these two divergent national contexts. The results show that in Britain, first-time homeownership transitions are tightly synchronized with partnership formation. By contrast, in Germany first moves into homeownership typically occur later around or after the arrival of children. Parental owner-occupation accelerates entry into homeownership in both contexts, while the effects of other parental characteristics are relatively muted. Furthermore, the results highlight how individual socioeconomic factors are critical determinants of entering owner-occupation. This is particularly true in Britain where there is a strong socioeconomic gradient in first-time homeownership transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The finding that homeowners own more non-housing wealth than tenants is well known. We examine whether the higher financial wealth of owners can be partly explained with increases in saving when becoming a homeowner in two distinct institutional contexts. Using longitudinal data for the UK (British Household Panel Survey) and Germany (Socio-Economic Panel Study), we find that homeowners save more and are financially wealthier than tenants. However, when controlling for time-constant selection into homeownership, upon entering homeownership households reduce their probability to save in Germany and reduce their average saving rate in Germany and the UK. For Germany, there is some evidence that processes of homemaking (family formation and home improvement) lead to less saving. For the UK, we find no evidence that increasing home equity over time discourages saving. Finally, tenants do not compensate for their lack of housing wealth by accumulating more non-housing wealth over time. This disadvantage for tenants seems more pronounced in the UK compared to Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using detailed micro-level survey data for three advanced European welfare-state economies (Germany, Netherlands and UK), our analyses suggest a fairly common hierarchy to homeownership, according to partnership status, exists. In all three countries, a variety of interrelated factors appear to encourage greater propensities for homeownership amongst co-residential households (married/cohabiting), as compared to single-person households. However, important macro-contextual differences do appear to play a significant role in mediating the magnitude of difference within this hierarchy. For instance, in Germany the importance of marriage as a predictor of homeownership is found to be particularly strong, with married couples having far higher propensities for homeownership, even when compared to non-married cohabiters. In the Netherlands and UK, where an emphasis on traditional family and marriage is less pronounced, and where homeownership is generally more popular and accessible, the differentiation between married/unmarried partners is greatly reduced. Furthermore, we find no evidence to suggest that living-apart-together partners are more/less likely to own their home than singles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The homeownership rate in the United States has continuously been about 20 percentage points higher than that of Germany. This homeownership gap is traced back to before the First World War at the urban level. Existing approaches, relying on socio-economic factors, demographics, culture or housing policy, cannot explain the persistence of these differences in homeownership. This article fills this explanatory gap by making a path-dependence argument: it argues that nineteenth-century urban conditions either began to create the American suburbanized single-family house cities or compact multi-unit-building cities, as in Germany. US cities developed differently from German ones because they lacked feudal shackles, were governed as “private cities” and gave easier access to mortgages and building land. The more historically suburbanized a city, the lower its homeownership rate today. Economic and political reinforcing mechanisms kept the two countries on their paths. The article’s contribution is to give a historical and city-focused answer to a standing question in the housing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article investigates the relationship between homeownership and life satisfaction in Germany, using German Socio-Economic Panel Study data from 1992 to 2009. The data not only allow controlling for a wide range of variables, but also tackle various measurement problems of previous studies. Ordered logit models support a positive relationship between homeownership and life satisfaction. In addition, regression models with fixed effects also reveal unobserved differences between homeowners and renters. Further results show that homeownership is particularly important for low-income households and that there is a significant interaction between homeownership and the condition of the dwelling as well as homeownership and the financial burden of the household. Overall, the findings indicate that policies aim at a higher degree if life satisfaction should not focus on the promotion of homeownership alone, but also support home maintenance costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comparatively low homeownership rate in Germany is often referred to as a weakness of the German housing market. As it turns out, the situation in Germany is primarily due to four factors. First, rental housing makes up a larger share of the market because of an extensive social housing sector. The high quality standard of social housing and the fact that private investors were included in the subsidisation scheme from the beginning laid the foundation for a large private rental housing market. Second, homeowners in Germany did not benefit from the same high subsidies as in countries such as Spain or the Netherlands. Third, the German rental housing market was not rendered inoperative by excessive interventions in rents, as was the case in countries such as Spain and the UK. Finally, German house prices remained stable over a long period of time. Therefore, in view of these results, judgements on Germany's housing market should be revised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gives an overview of developments in the social rented housing sector in the Federal Republic of Germany. Traditional social housing; Changes in the social rented sector; Conclusions and outlook.