IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/pqgw7_v1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Online Rental Housing Market Representation and the Digital Reproduction of Urban Inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Boeing, Geoff

    (Northeastern University)

Abstract

As the rental housing market moves online, the Internet offers divergent possible futures: either the promise of more-equal access to information for previously marginalized homeseekers, or a reproduction of longstanding information inequalities. Biases in online listings' representativeness could impact different communities' access to housing search information, reinforcing traditional information segregation patterns through a digital divide. They could also circumscribe housing practitioners' and researchers' ability to draw broad market insights from listings to understand rental supply and affordability. This study examines millions of Craigslist rental listings across the US and finds that they spatially concentrate and over-represent whiter, wealthier, and better-educated communities. Other significant demographic differences exist in age, language, college enrollment, rent, poverty rate, and household size. Most cities' online housing markets are digitally segregated by race and class, and we discuss various implications for residential mobility, community legibility, gentrification, housing voucher utilization, and automated monitoring and analytics in the smart cities paradigm. While Craigslist contains valuable crowdsourced data to better understand affordability and available rental supply in real-time, it does not evenly represent all market segments. The Internet promises information democratization, and online listings can reduce housing search costs and increase choice sets. However, technology access/preferences and information channel segregation can concentrate such information-broadcasting benefits in already-advantaged communities, reproducing traditional inequalities and reinforcing residential sorting and segregation dynamics. Technology platforms like Craigslist construct new institutions with the power to shape spatial economies, human interactions, and planners' ability to monitor and respond to urban challenges.

Suggested Citation

  • Boeing, Geoff, 2019. "Online Rental Housing Market Representation and the Digital Reproduction of Urban Inequality," SocArXiv pqgw7_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:pqgw7_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/pqgw7_v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/5d2a1e1c1c5b4a001c9fe8b2/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/pqgw7_v1?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Larry DeBoer, 1985. "Resident Age and Housing Search: Evidence From Hedonic Residuals," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 22(5), pages 445-451, October.
    2. Carlsson, Magnus & Eriksson, Stefan, 2014. "Discrimination in the rental market for apartments," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 41-54.
    3. Kory Kroft & Devin G. Pope, 2014. "Does Online Search Crowd Out Traditional Search and Improve Matching Efficiency? Evidence from Craigslist," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(2), pages 259-303.
    4. Robert Seamans & Feng Zhu, 2014. "Responses to Entry in Multi-Sided Markets: The Impact of Craigslist on Local Newspapers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(2), pages 476-493, February.
    5. Ben-Shahar, Danny & Golan, Roni, 2019. "Improved information shock and price dispersion: A natural experiment in the housing market," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 70-84.
    6. Heather L. Schwartz & Kata Mihaly & Breann Gala, 2017. "Encouraging Residential Moves to Opportunity Neighborhoods: An Experiment Testing Incentives Offered to Housing Voucher Recipients," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(2), pages 230-260, March.
    7. repec:wly:soecon:v:81:1:y:2014:p:135-167 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Im, Jongho & Seo, Youngme & Cetin, Kristen S. & Singh, Jasmeet, 2017. "Energy efficiency in U.S. residential rental housing: Adoption rates and impact on rent," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 1021-1033.
    9. Alasdair Rae, 2015. "Online Housing Search and the Geography of Submarkets," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(3), pages 453-472, June.
    10. Porter, Constance Elise & Donthu, Naveen, 2006. "Using the technology acceptance model to explain how attitudes determine Internet usage: The role of perceived access barriers and demographics," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 59(9), pages 999-1007, September.
    11. Andrew Hanson & Michael Santas, 2014. "Field Experiment Tests for Discrimination against Hispanics in the U.S. Rental Housing Market," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 81(1), pages 135-167, July.
    12. Robert Sampson & Patrick Sharkey, 2008. "Neighborhood selection and the social reproduction of concentrated racial inequality," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 45(1), pages 1-29, February.
    13. Billings, Stephen B. & Johnson, Erik B., 2012. "The location quotient as an estimator of industrial concentration," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 642-647.
    14. Boeing, Geoff, 2017. "New Insights into Rental Housing Markets across the United States: Web Scraping and Analyzing Craigslist Rental Listings," SocArXiv v54w4, Center for Open Science.
    15. Mark J. Garmaise, 2004. "Confronting Information Asymmetries: Evidence from Real Estate Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(2), pages 405-437.
    16. Pablo Kurlat & Johannes Stroebel, 2015. "Testing for Information Asymmetries in Real Estate Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(8), pages 2429-2461.
    17. Halket, Jonathan & Pignatti Morano di Custoza, Matteo, 2015. "Homeownership and the scarcity of rentals," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 107-123.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Geoff Boeing, 2020. "Online rental housing market representation and the digital reproduction of urban inequality," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(2), pages 449-468, March.
    2. Julia Gabriele Harten & Geoff Boeing, 2024. "Access to the exclusive city: Home sharing as an affordable housing strategy," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(16), pages 3069-3085, December.
    3. Geoff Boeing & Max Besbris & Ariela Schachter & John Kuk, 2021. "Housing Search in the Age of Big Data: Smarter Cities or the Same Old Blind Spots?," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 112-126, January.
    4. Boeing, Geoff & Wegmann, Jake & Jiao, Junfeng, 2020. "Rental Housing Spot Markets: How Online Information Exchanges Can Supplement Transacted-Rents Data," SocArXiv phgqt, Center for Open Science.
    5. Daniel Broxterman & Tingyu Zhou, 2023. "Information Frictions in Real Estate Markets: Recent Evidence and Issues," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 66(2), pages 203-298, February.
    6. Vera Brenčič, 2016. "The impact of Craigslist’s entry on competing employment websites," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-15, December.
    7. Victor M. Bennett & Robert Seamans & Feng Zhu, 2015. "Cannibalization and option value effects of secondary markets: Evidence from the US concert industry," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(11), pages 1599-1614, November.
    8. Marcel Fischer & Roland Füss & Simon Stehle, 2021. "Local house price comovements," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 49(S1), pages 169-198, March.
    9. Zhenyu Gao & Michael Sockin & Wei Xiong, 2020. "Learning about the Neighborhood," NBER Working Papers 26907, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Dragana Cvijanović & Christophe Spaenjers, 2021. "“We’ll Always Have Paris”: Out-of-Country Buyers in the Housing Market," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(7), pages 4120-4138, July.
    11. Gaddis, S. Michael, 2018. "An Introduction to Audit Studies in the Social Sciences," SocArXiv e5hfc_v1, Center for Open Science.
    12. Bricongne, Jean-Charles & Meunier, Baptiste & Pouget, Sylvain, 2023. "Web-scraping housing prices in real-time: The Covid-19 crisis in the UK," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(PB).
    13. Charles Angelucci & Julia Cagé, 2019. "Newspapers in Times of Low Advertising Revenues," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 319-364, August.
    14. Chiara Farronato & Andrey Fradkin, 2018. "The Welfare Effects of Peer Entry in the Accommodation Market: The Case of Airbnb," NBER Working Papers 24361, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Gao, Pengjie & Lee, Chang & Murphy, Dermot, 2020. "Financing dies in darkness? The impact of newspaper closures on public finance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(2), pages 445-467.
    16. Chao, Ching-Hsiang & Chang, Chuang-Chang & Chen, Tsung-Yu & Wu, Zhen-Xing, 2024. "Determinants of disposition effect in the real estate market: Evidence from Taiwan," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    17. Miyakawa, Daisuke & Shimizu, Chihiro & Uesugi, Iichiro, 2016. "Geography and Realty Prices: Evidence from International Transaction-Level Data," HIT-REFINED Working Paper Series 52, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    18. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4edekc99or8n2bu86nu4ua8adl is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Weichselbaumer, Doris & Riess, Hermann, 2024. "Discrimination in the Austrian Rental Housing Market: The Effect of Information Concerning First and Second-Generation Immigrant Status," IZA Discussion Papers 17403, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Sugasawa, Takeru & Harano, Kei, 2023. "A field experiment on discrimination against foreigners in the rental housing market in Japan examining the 23 wards of Tokyo," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    21. Hayoung Kim, 2024. "Homebuyers’ geographic proximity as a predictor of future housing price growth," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 52(4), pages 1140-1158, July.

    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:osf:socarx:pqgw7_v1. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    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.