Homebuying: a critical perspective on financial costs and gains

Soaita, A. M. and Searle, B. (2015) Homebuying: a critical perspective on financial costs and gains. Critical Housing Analysis, 2(1), pp. 65-73. (doi: 10.13060/23362839.2015.2.1.177)

Abstract

In Britain, the shift from the ideology of homeownership into one of homeownership-based welfare has been sustained by homebuyers being regarded as investors. Homeowners are expected to create a synergy between the owned house seen as a space of shelter, place of home and increasingly, an investment vehicle and an object of debt. Drawing on 80 interviews with owner-occupiers and national data on house prices and mortgages, we examine the way in which the meanings of home meanings are negotiated through the subjective calculation of the financial costs and gains of homebuying. We explore homebuyers’ debt amnesia, their miscalculation of gains and their disregard of inflation. However homebuyers’ financially unsophisticated understanding of the asset-home arises less from book-keeping complexities or difficulties in pricing the emotional domain of the home, but rather by them instinctively considering the alternative cost of a rented space of shelter. From this financial perspective and given affordability, homebuying illustrates a misleading ideological notion of choice.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Soaita, Dr Adriana Mihaela
• Authors: Soaita, A. M., and Searle, B.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Urban Studies
• Journal Name: Critical Housing Analysis
• Publisher: Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Institute of Sociology
• ISSN: 2336-2839
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2015 Critical Housing Analysis
• First Published: First published in Critical Housing Analysis 2(1): 65-73
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced with the permission of the Editor