IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/intjhp/v12y2012i1p27-45.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Demographic Change and Retirement Planning: Comparing Households’ Views on the Role of Housing Equity in Germany and the UK

Author

Listed:
  • Anwen Jones
  • Tim Geilenkeuser
  • Ilse Helbrecht
  • Deborah Quilgars

Abstract

As states across Europe come under pressure to meet the needs of ageing populations, there has been increasing interest in the potential role of housing equity in funding welfare provision. This paper draws on the findings of a European study, Demographic Change and Housing Wealth (DEMHOW), which set out to explore whether housing plays a role in retirement planning. This paper compares the views of homeowners in Germany and the UK. The former is a country where homeownership is the minority tenure and the preserve of affluent households, and where house prices have been stagnant for years. The latter is a country of homeownership where half the poor are home owners, and where real house price increases over many decades have served to establish the belief that homeownership is one of the best investments accessible to ordinary people. In addition, ‘equity release’ is more common, and related products better developed, in the UK than in Germany. Given these differences, it might be assumed UK homeowners would be more willing to consider utilising housing equity to supplement their income in retirement than their German counterparts. This paper sets out to explore whether this is the case.

Suggested Citation

  • Anwen Jones & Tim Geilenkeuser & Ilse Helbrecht & Deborah Quilgars, 2012. "Demographic Change and Retirement Planning: Comparing Households’ Views on the Role of Housing Equity in Germany and the UK," International Journal of Housing Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(1), pages 27-45.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:intjhp:v:12:y:2012:i:1:p:27-45
    DOI: 10.1080/14616718.2012.651299
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14616718.2012.651299
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/14616718.2012.651299?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sharma, Tripti & French, Declan & McKillop, Donal, 2022. "The UK equity release market: Views from the regulatory authorities, product providers and advisors," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    2. Florian Bartsch & Florian Buhlmann & Karolin Kirschenmann & Carolin Schmidt, 2021. "Is There a Need for Reverse Mortgages in Germany? Empirical Evidence and Policy Implications," EconPol Policy Reports 31, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    3. Declan French & Donal McKillop & Tripti Sharma, 2017. "Analysis of Housing Equity Withdrawal by its Forms," CHaRMS Working Papers 17-04, Centre for HeAlth Research at the Management School (CHaRMS).
    4. Baulkaran, Vishaal & Jain, Pawan, 2024. "Home equity and retirement funding: Challenges and opportunities," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:intjhp:v:12:y:2012:i:1:p:27-45. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/REUJ20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.