Assessing the factors influencing variations in residential rental housing:

Abstract

The increased urbanization has put tremendous pressure on housing supply and demand leading to unaffordability of houses in Urban India. The Government policies have focused on ownership-based model approaches which are mostly unsuccessful. With 27% Indian population living in rental accommodation, mostly the urban migrants rely on rental houses rather than ownership-based housing due to temporal shift and affordability. Thus, rental housing plays a vital role in providing a broad choice of shelter for different income groups according to their preference and their affordable range. In megacities like Delhi where rental houses are in high demand, the residential rental values vary from place to place in various types of settlements. Although the housing units are all located in same area, but they differ in terms of their surroundings, commercial centers, communities’ typologies and other amenities. Thus, location choice has great significance in housing market. Hence, it is necessary to understand the influences of these rental variations on the rental housing market. Therefore, variations in rental housing prices are the result of individual tenant’s preferences which tends to be local in character, like physical, social, and economic parameters. This research study is an attempt towards improving the understanding of rental housing market and examine how location preferences determine the occupancy rate, rental prices, and vacant stock in rental housing market. The study tries to explore different case studies and barriers faced in the policies and affordable rental housing scheme implementation in different metropolitan cities. Further, it identifies the parameters which are responsible for the spatial variations in rental housing occupancy and to achieve this, the role of physical, social and economic factors is analysed. The study is undertaken at ward level in NCT Delhi through data from primary and secondary sources, household surveys, interviews, Delphi technique and analysed using regression methods. Through our study analysis strategies will be developed for increasing stock and availability of rental in NCT Delhi. This study suggests there is a need for a range of rental options for different types of migrants including migrants with family, single migrants, and floating population. Keywords: Rental housing, spatial variations, rental housing, residential rental values, locational preference