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| Extrapolative Expectations of Housing Price and Long-Term Rental Demand: Evidence from Rental Housing Contract Data |
| LI Shangchen, ZHANG Yingguang, HU Jiayin, ZHANG Zheng
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| Center for Financial Innovation and Development, The University of Hong Kong; Guanghua School of Management, Peking University;National School of Development, Peking University; Guanghua School of Management, Peking University |
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Abstract The demand for long-term rental housing continues to grow as an increasing number of households choose to rent instead of buying their first homes. In major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou, the proportion of renters among the total population reached 40% by 2022. This paper systematically examines the relationship between housing price growth expectations and long-term rental demand using a proprietary dataset comprising over 400,000 rental contracts from a long-term rental platform and approximately 500,000 second-hand housing transactions in Beijing between 2015 and 2019.
We address the empirical challenge of measuring long-term rental demand by analyzing leases through the innovative business model of a long-term rental platform. Acting as a “second landlord” in the rental market, the platform signs long-term leasing contracts with property owners, acquires properties with fixed rents, and sublets them to tenants after standardizing renovation and furnishing. To minimize vacancies and maximize profits, the rental platform prioritizes tenant renewals. Therefore, tenant renewals with the platform serve as a reliable proxy for long-term rental demand unaffected by landlords.
To investigate the impact of housing price expectations, we exploit the implementation of the differentiated housing purchase restriction (HPR) policy in Beijing in 2017 as an exogenous shock. We find a significant negative (positive) correlation between house price growth in the tenant's neighborhood and the tenant's renewal rate before (after) March 2017. Prior to the HPR policy, during a period of rapid house price growth, a 1% increase in house price growth is, on average, associated with a 2.2% decrease in tenant renewal rate after controlling for tenant, leasing, and rental property characteristics and including neighborhood and year-month fixed effects. In contrast, following the HPR policy, a 1% increase in house price growth is significantly associated with a 1.9% increase in tenant renewal rate. Our pre-trend analysis confirms that the HPR policy is critical to reversing the impact of house price growth on long-term rental demands.
Our results suggest that as the HPR policy stabilizes house price expectations, tenants residing in neighborhoods with faster house price growth become more inclined to choose long-term rentals as their housing solution. Tenants who continue renting from the platform are more likely to switch to new leases with higher rent and to entire rentals, indicating a trend of moving up the housing ladder as they decide to rent instead of buying. We further find that in the post-HPR period, house price growth in multiple past periods is positively related to tenant renewal rates, with stronger effects observed as the renewal time approaches. Moreover, both the volatility and dispersion of house price growth are significantly and positively associated with tenant renewal rates.
Our empirical findings align with the predictions of extrapolative expectations theory and diagnostic expectations theory in the economics and finance literature (Malmendier and Nagel, 2016; Bordalo et al., 2018; Bordalo et al., 2020). During house price booms, tenants extrapolate recent house price information and conclude that prices will continue to rise in the future. However, the introduction of the HPR policy serves as a diagnostic signal that prompts tenants to adjust their expectation formation mechanism and recognize the potential downsides.
Apart from housing price expectations, the HPR policy may impact tenants' demand for long-term rentals by increasing the cost of home purchases. However, the differentiated HPR policy implemented in Beijing aims to deter speculative home purchases while safeguarding reasonable home purchase demand, thus having a relatively minor impact on first-home buyers. Notably, 94% of the tenants in our sample are non-local residents with an average age of 29 years, suggesting that most of them, who are eligible to purchase their first home, are not directly affected by the tightened credit constraints of the HPR. This is supported by a heterogeneity analysis showing that the effects are not related to the age of tenants but are more pronounced among tenants from less developed provinces. These pieces of evidence collectively indicate that direct credit restrictions are not the primary mechanism driving our results.
This paper makes several contributions to the literature. First, we address the empirical challenge of measuring tenants' willingness to rent for an extended period by utilizing a unique dataset from a long-term rental platform, which ensures that the renewal information reflects tenants' decision-making rather than supply-side factors. Second, we verify the spillover effects of the housing transaction market on tenants' demand for long-term rentals, thereby enriching the research on the relationship between the housing sales market and the rental market. Third, we provide empirical evidence of the application of extrapolative expectations theory and diagnostic expectations theory in real decision-making processes regarding tenants' rental renewal choices. Our empirical findings demonstrate the crucial role of future house price growth expectations in influencing residents' demand for long-term rentals.
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Received: 22 March 2023
Published: 17 July 2024
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