TITLE:
Social Utilities versus House Prices as Scales of Residential Preferences for Homes’ Attributes 30 Years Apart
AUTHORS:
Alan G. Phipps
KEYWORDS:
Residential Mobility, House Price, Preference, Utility, Consumption Disequilibrium
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.13 No.3,
March
21,
2022
ABSTRACT: One of two scales of
residential preferences in a resident’s mind is their social and environmental
utilities for homes’ attributes’ levels. The other is their willingness to pay
for these attributes’ levels as it conforms with prices in the local real
estate market. Convergence between two scales of preferences has one mentally
superseding the other as primary. Divergence will more likely produce a
consumption disequilibrium as the gap in price between affordable socially and
monetarily most preferred attributes’ levels of homes. Convergences and divergences
between these two fluctuating scales of preferences are measured with three
interrelated datasets for up to 74 respondents and 3,000 single-detached(-like) houses in each of Saskatoon SK in
1987 and Windsor ON in 2020. Results are that respondents have diverging
monetized and social utilities for up to seven of 12 generic attributes of
homes in 1987 and/or 2020. They therefore will frequently have large
consumption disequilibria for these attributes. The maximum of these will
average up to one-half more than the price of an attribute’s socially most
preferred level if they want its monetarily most preferred level. Despite this,
a typical respondent is not behaving as if asset accumulation potentials
realized in prices for homes’ attributes levels have superseded social
needs and desires for up to seven attributes’ levels, even at times such as
after moving in or when planning on moving out.