Abstract

The homeownership rate has very important policy implcations. For owners of residential real estate, the own home typically is the largest asset of the household. It contributes to the household's retirement savings and improves the household's credit worthiness, allowing the household to react to negative economic shocks more easily. On the other hand, a large literature has shown that the homeownership rate affects mobility of households and the household's behavior on the labor market, thereby increasing unemployment risks. At the same time, it is still not clear what determines regional differences in the homeownership rate. This project aims to fill this gap by analyzing census data from England and Germany alongside with data from the EU-SILC panel survey.