The Determinants of Household Housing Affordability in Chengdu, China

Housing is one of the fundamentals for the society and housing affordability is one of the key factors related to the socioeconomic stability and development of a country. This research attempts to examine the issue of housing affordability from the micro household perspective in Cheng Du on a set of online questionnaire data. Including not only income, housing provident fund and other economic attributes, this study also focuses on the important implication of social capital for households’ house-purchasing decisions. The analysis shows that the household affordability is highly related to their social-economic conditions, such as their age, birthplace, income, and housing provident fund. This research provides new explanation for the homeownership condition in urban China. It helps deepen our understanding of the rationales behind the housing purchasing decision and will have meaningful implications to the practitioners.