Analysis on Housing Affordability of Urban Residents in Mainland China Based on Multiple Indexes: Taking 35 Cities as Examples

摘要

Over the last 10 years, the soaring housing prices have raised concerns over 'affordability' in Chinese housing market, although it is still not enshrined in agreed standards, partly because of different opinions about how it should be measured. To overcome the inadequacy of a single index, we examine the housing affordability of 35 large and medium cities in China from 2009 to 2016 using price-to-income ratio (PIR), monthly payment-income ratio (MIR) and the residual income approach (RI). With consideration of the characteristics of China's real estate market, we have re-discussed the reasonable range of the indexes. The comparison of single index between cities shows significant periodicity and multi-index clustering analysis reveals regional characteristics, which help us to further the understanding of housing affordability. In the end, policy recommendations on reforming Chinese urban housing system are suggested according to the differences and changing laws of housing affordability among cities.