Housing Tenure Patterns for British Natives and non-Natives

Recent projections suggest that despite Brexit, immigration to the UK is expected to increase which may further change the UK housing market trends.A key housing market dynamic caused by net migration in Britain is the variation in housing tenure trends for natives and non-natives which further influences housing demand. Anecdotal evidence reveals that the proportion of homeowners is much higher for natives than for non-natives, suggesting that an increase in migration may lead to growth in the demand on the rental market at a higher rate than the sales market. Research further suggests that it may be worthy to analyse second-generation migrants as a separate cohort from first-generation migrants, and natives. However, there is an absence of empirical evidence in this regard in Britain. Classical models analyse housing tenure choices in the context of the lifecycle position of the family head. We however provide evidence that while the natural lifecycle largely influences the housing tenure choice of natives and second-generation migrants, the migration lifecycle may be a stronger predictor of housing tenure choices for first-generation migrants. Research further reveals that generational factors, life pathways of natives and non-natives, migration-related factors and factors relating to the destination countries (among other factors) may also be responsible for the variation in housing tenure. While similar studies in the UK also account for migration era, racial and ethnic variation in housing tenure, they do not differentiate between natives and non-natives. We therefore posit that the year of entry, as well as racial and ethnic variations, may be an insufficient basis of analysis, and there may be deeper underlying factors, particularly native/non-native dichotomy. Our results indicate that the migration lifecycle may be the key predictor of housing tenure choices for first-generation migrants. We also observe that the effects of the natural lifecycle, individual, demographic, household and socioeconomic factors vary for natives, first-generation and second-generation migrants. Our results further reveal that second-generation migrants in Britain appear to have distinct housing tenure patterns, different from natives and first-generation migrants; and natives and non-natives housing tenure patterns differ in London, compared to the general British population.