Falling out of the home owner market

Abstract By and large the tenure change literature has focused on the shift from renting to owning. The converse process, the move from ownership to renting, has received less attention. In this paper we provide a context for examining who ‘drops out’ of the home owner market. The results show that families with children are less likely to be able to remain in the home owner market than couples and, conversely, that two income earners are more likely to be able to stay in the market or buy another dwelling after a spell in renting than a one income earner. Although those results are somewhat expected, we provide additional new information on the nature of temporary moves out of the home owner market and returns at a later time, and on the seemingly greater role of accidental effects on exit from the home owner market than entrance into that market.