Ownership Duration in the Residential Housing Market: The Influence of Structure, Tenure, Household and Neighborhood Factors

Turnover rates are important as determinants of the level of activity in housing related industries, in effecting housing market adjustments, and in revealing prices in illiquid, highly segmented, informationally inefficient housing markets. This study examines the relative influence of structure features, tenure, household characteristics and neighborhood factors on ownership turnover rates. The study exploits a Chicago database of just under 50,000 paired sales of attached housing units, with at least one of the sales occurring between 1992 and June of 2002. Within the framework of a Cox proportional hazard model, we focus on a number of factors affecting turnover rates, including whether the housing unit is owner-occupied or rented at the time of sale, price at the time of sale, unit size, age, location in a tax increment financing district, housing density, structure size, year of sale, and neighborhood within Chicago (by Community Area). Finding strong spatial segmentation in turnover (hazard) rates, we further examine the capacity of four sets of Census-derived variables to explain the spatial variation. The household characteristics offer decidedly the strongest power in explaining the segmentation. Results from the hazard model, combined with results from the analysis of spatial variation suggest a household life cycle model of variation in turnover rates.