Immigration and the Local Housing Market in England and Wales

The thesis examines foreign immigration and its relations with the local housing market using secondary data for England and Wales. It specifically looks at the effect of immigration on several key housing market variables such as house prices, housing supply, sub-market house prices and overcrowding as well as its interaction with indigenous households. It subsequently looks at ethnic group wide differences in overcrowding experiences and explores potential factors that drive these differences in outcomes taking into account of both the cultural and financial dimensions. Among the findings, three points are worth being highlighted: (1) immigrants have weak negative effect on local housing wealth through a small reduction in house prices however evidence has confirmed native flight at the top of income distribution and out-migration response tends to take place over longer distance, i.e. across neighbourhoods rather than within neighbourhood; (2) private rental and free rental stocks were on the rise moderately in high immigration areas which demonstrate the positive response of supply in response to immigration inflows; (3) there possesses differences in overcrowding experiences in ethnic groups. For some, migration and co-ethnic support are effective in mitigating these deprivations while not for others. Number of overcrowded households rises almost across all groups in response to increases in small builds while only building extra-large sized stocks in owner-occupied and social housing sectors have moderate positive associations with reductions in overcrowding.