Deep Understanding of Private Housing Supply in Tehran Applied Structure and Agency Approach

The Tehran housing market is the largest concentration of most forms of economic activity, with the largest and most important housing market in the country. The roots of economic and demographic centralization in Tehran go back to the time when it became the capital of Iran. This market is a complex market dominated by the private sector, and encounters many problems such as high housing prices and a shortcoming in the housing supply, which seem unsolvable to experts and residents. In spite of multiple agents and institutions involved in this sector and engaging at different level of authority – state, government, and local – there is no official information or research for identifying this wide variety of actors and the housing market’s performance is ambiguous for both policy makers and private actors. Lack of understating in this scope causes inefficiency in the market and makes the housing plan and policies inapplicable and inappropriate for the social system. This research, therefore, was undertaken to develop a deep understanding of the structure and operation of the private housing supply in Tehran; in particular, it attempts to identify the constraints on housing provision. From the structure and agency philosophical perspective and using a qualitative approach based on 40 interviews as the primary data collection method, this research focused on the way that the housing development process takes place in Tehran and the relationship between the structuring dynamics of housing development process and the particular interests, beliefs, perceptions and strategies of each individual agent. It is concluded that, in general, the housing development process involves a complex and contextual embeddedness of institution and agency relationships. The housing development process in Tehran is shaped by the form of economic and institutional structure, which in turn affects the interests and the way agents behave in deploying rules and resources. The state control, lack of democracy, government policies, and unstable institutional environments caused turbulence in the housing sector.