A Systems Approach to Housing Market Analysis: The Role of Search and Migration in Market Dynamics in Greater Manchester Lam Le Vinh Doan Supervisors: Prof Craig Watkins, Dr Alasdair Rae The University of Sheffield Department of Urban Studies and Planning Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2017 i ii To my mother and father who always wish me to success To my wife who always supports me in my life To my little boy who is always my treasure iii Acknowledgement Special thanks to my mom and dad who are the best in the world and I owe my success to you Special thanks also to my grandmothers, grandfathers who always want to see me be happy Thanks for my wife, Trang Pham, who is always be on my side to support, encourage, both physically and emotionally during all my hard time. A special thank also is sent to her for helping me with some excel functions. Thanks for my little boy, Anh Doan, who is my encouragement to finish all the hard works. To Craig and Al, thanks so much for providing data and your dedicated supervision, guidance and support. To my friend, Khai Nguyen, thanks for the friendship that make you travel between London and Sheffield just to meet and enjoy time with my family. To my friends, An Dau, Chinh Nguyen, Cang Nguyen, Duan Vo and his family, thanks for spending time with me in the UK. To my friend, Nghi To, thanks for encouraging me on a pathway into PhD Finally, thanks for all, both academic and non-academic, who has supported me, physically and/or emotionally, during my PhD period. iv Abstract Housing markets are complex and dynamic entities. They are fragmented across space and their structure and functionality alters over time. This complexity makes monitoring and steering markets difficult and is one of the reasons that planning for housing is analytically and technically challenging. To analyse housing effectively, it is widely held that we should conceptualise the market as a part of a system of linked but spatially coherent Housing Markets Areas, comprising internally of inter-linked submarkets that are over time subject to changes in configuration and function. In response, this thesis adopts a systems approach to frame the analysis of housing market dynamics (O’Sullivan et al, 2004). Within this framework, the study aims to understand the spatial and temporal dynamics of the Greater Manchester housing system in recent years. The analysis seeks to demonstrate the usefulness of a market systems approach that employs visual data analytical methods to provide insights into market processes. Specifically the thesis analyses housing search, migration and house price and offers a case study that explores the interactions between HMAs, and submarket connections within an HMA. The major contribution is to highlight the importance of considering a housing market as a system of linked HMAs and submarkets, to illustrate the useful insights that might be generated using visual data methods and to provide a novel analysis that combines role of housing search, migration and house price data in gaining a better understanding of how a local housing market works. In doing so, the study is at the forefront of the emerging literature that uses new micro-datasets to analyse search information. v vi Table of Contents ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................ V TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................ VII LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES ........................................................................XI ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................................ XVI CHAPTER ONE: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ROLE OF MIGRATION AND SEARCH IN THE HOUSING MARKET SYSTEM ..................................... 1 1.1 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 1 1.2 RESEARCH AIMS AND OBJECTIVES ............................................................................ 6 1.3 RESEARCH APPROACH & METHOD ............................................................................ 7 1.4 THESIS STRUCTURE ................................................................................................... 8 CHAPTER TWO: THEORISING THE HOUSING MARKET .......................... 11 2.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 11 2.2 THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE HOUSING PRODUCT AND MARKET ........................... 12 2.2.1 Immobility ........................................................................................................... 13 2.2.2 Product heterogeneity ........................................................................................ 14 2.2.3 High cost ............................................................................................................ 15 2.2.4 Both a consumption and investment product ..................................................... 15 2.2.5 Long time delays ................................................................................................. 15 2.3 ECONOMIC THEORIES ............................................................................................. 16 2.3.1 Neo-classical Economics .................................................................................... 17 2.3.2 Institutional Economics ...................................................................................... 24 2.3.3 Behavioural Economics ...................................................................................... 28 2.4 CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................... 34 CHAPTER THREE: TOWARDS A SYSTEM MODEL OF THE HOUSING MARKET SYSTEM APPROACH .......................................................................... 37 3.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 37 3.2 MARKET STRUCTURE .............................................................................................. 40 3.2.1 Housing system framework ................................................................................ 40 3.2.2 Identifying housing market areas ....................................................................... 44 3.2.3 Identifying submarkets ....................................................................................... 48 3.3 SYSTEM DYNAMICS ................................................................................................ 52 3.3.1 Market filtering .................................................................................................. 52 3.3.2 Housing search process ..................................................................................... 63 3.3.3 Household migration .......................................................................................... 67 3.4 MARKET SYSTEM MODELS ...................................................................................... 74 3.4.1 Neo-classical models .......................................................................................... 75 3.4.2 Models based on satisfaction, following Simon ................................................. 79 3.4.3 Old behavioural models based on institutional economics ................................ 85 3.4.4 Social cultural model: Levy and Lee (2004) ...................................................... 90 vii 3.5 AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK ............................................................................... 92 3.6 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 101 CHAPTER FOUR: RESEARCH DESIGN .......................................................... 105 4.1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 105 4.2 RESEARCH AIMS AND OBJECTIVES ........................................................................ 106 4.3 STUDY AREA ......................................................................................................... 107 4.3.1 Why Greater Manchester? ............................................................................... 107 4.3.2 An outline of Greater Manchester .................................................................... 110 4.3.3 Greater Manchester Spatial Framework ......................................................... 115 4.3.4 The Association of Greater Manchester Authorities and the controversies .... 117 4.3.5 Devolution Manchester .................................................................................... 118 4.3.6 Previous financial crisis ................................................................................... 119 4.4 A GIS-BASED VISUAL APPROACH ......................................................................... 120 4.4.1 Principles of GIS .............................................................................................. 120 4.4.2 The use of GIS .................................................................................................. 123 4.4.3 A geospatial approach to analysing the housing market ................................. 125 4.5 DATA .................................................................................................................... 128 4.5.1 Census data .....................................................................................................