If You Rented, You’d Be Home by Now
A piece on home-ownership and labor mobility in The Economist notes this curious fact:
“Homeowners commute farther than renters, which causes congestion and makes getting to work more time-consuming and costly for everyone.”
The source is Andrew Oswald at the University of Warwick. In his paper “Commuting in Great Britain in the 1990s,” he writes: “Our estimates imply from Table 7 an approximately 44% longer journey-to-work time for male owner-occupiers relative to those renting from the private sector housing market.” The data is British but I would guess it translates to the U.S.
Interesting in light of the link between foreclosure rates and commuting times, as explored in this documentary, this article about Contra Costa County, among other pieces.
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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 21st, 2009 at 4:08 pm and is filed under Cities, Commuting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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March 21st, 2009 at 7:58 pm
This seems intuitively correct - in that if you’re renting and find a job distant from your apartment, it’s usually no big deal to find an apartment nearer the job. But it’s more of a big deal, more of a break with something you’ve invested in (both financially and, often, emotionally) to buy a new house closer to where you work…and you may not be able to afford it anyway.
March 22nd, 2009 at 9:37 am
2fs, I’m not sure that flexibility in moving explains that large of a gap. Does this data suggest that most people place a higher priority on home ownership over location when it comes to real estate? People would rather own a home in their second-tier neighborhood than rent a home in their first-choice neighborhood?
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:30 am
This is so true. And hopefully people are finally getting that you need to either A) rent close to your job or B) don’t buy a house in the burbs far away from everything or C) own a home with a reasonable distance to your job and if you decide to change positions make sure that you heavily weigh the distance from home into your decision making.
I for one demand that my job fits my lifestyle. In the past I have turned down good offers because they required too much personal sacrifice from the things I enjoy.
March 23rd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
And I bet the data would be even more skewed toward renters if you looked at duration of commute instead of distance of commute. Lots of renters in urban/inner-suburban neighborhoods that enjoy the flexibility of being able to get “reverse-commute” (is that the word?) to jobs in the inner suburbs very easily.