A Cash Flow Model of Rational Housing Tenure Choice*
构建了一个现金流框架下的住房成本模型，同时分析产权选择的消费和投资方面，通过计算租房等价流判断家庭应买房还是租房，发现结果对收入、居住时长、利率和通胀预期高度敏感。
This paper develops a model of housing costs in a cash flow framework. The cash flow approach allows both the consumption and investment aspects of tenure choice to be analyzed. By solving the model for the rental flow equivalent to any owning situation, we can determine whether or not a household would buy or rent from an economic perspective. The results are very sensitive to the household's income, the expected duration of occupancy, the mortgage interest rate, and inflation expectations. The results suggest that “rule‐of‐thumb” generalizations about tenure choice are often ill‐founded, and that studies of tenure choice need to explicitly consider the interaction of income, taxes, length of occupancy and expectations.