No profit in moving

A four-year programme is examining how and why we spend money

THE STATE of the housing market has no bearing on the behaviour of house buyers, according to research conducted for the Economic and Social Research Council.

The price slump and negative equity traps of the early 1990s, following the 1980s boom, have not deterred people from investing in home ownership nor changed attitudes to buying, according to Moira Munro, professor of planning and housing at Heriot-Watt University.

"For most people, a house is a home and people do not behave in response to the economic stimuli," Professor Munro said.

Her ongoing research project, Beliefs, Perceptions and Expectations in the UK Housing Market, is part of the ESRC's Economic Beliefs and Behaviour programme.

The researcher said the findings, to be released at a conference in November, have already surprised her.

The study was carried out between 1988 and 1995, during and after the recent house price slump in Britain.

Professor Munro focused on two distant cities - Glasgow, where the market has been relatively stable, and Bristol, where some of the worst effects of the boom-and-bust rollercoaster have been felt.

"We expected that because housing is such a major purchase - it's the biggest asset people ever buy - buyers would have learned the lessons of the slump," Professor Munro said.

"In the 1980s home buyers were promised big monetary rewards that were not fulfilled. We expected to see a lot more caution from those buyers.

"On the macro level, overall buying and selling activity is affected by the state of the market, but among those who were still moving, there had been no real change in their attitudes."

Professor Munro surveyed 800 people in the owner/occupier market, ranging from first-time buyers to static, long-term owners, in the two cities.

More detailed interviews were conducted with 45 people to examine their motives. Home buyers do not act like "rational investors", Professor Munro found. And people's motives for buying or selling remain the same regardless of the state of the market.

"It is not like investing on the stock market," she added. "There are a range of other considerations. People move with their work, then they think about schooling for children, and their family may be growing."

The survey found that 40 per cent of owners moved because they wanted a bigger house, while 29 per cent of first-time buyers had bought because they were getting married or were moving in with a partner.

Profit was not a major concern. Although most respondents were aware of the investment potential of home owning, resale issues were only a distant notion for buyers.

Profit for sellers was seen to exist "only on paper", as any financial gains were often channelled into new purchases.

Buying and selling generally was not regarded as a money-making exercise at all by most.

Only 45 per cent of owners in Bristol expected to see their house values rise, compared with 60 per cent in Glasgow.

Market conditions had no impact on borrowing. It was expected that if buyers were thinking in terms of investment, borrowing would be higher during a boom period.

However, borrowing as a percentage of the purchase price was higher in Glasgow, where the market was sluggish, than it was in booming Bristol.

The survey did identify a "deep pessimism" about the future of the housing market.

Forty per cent of owners in both cities said that buying a house had become "more risky" in the past three years.