Abstract

The homeownership rate in Germany is one of the lowest among advanced economies. To better understand this fact, we evaluate the role of specific housing policies that tend to discourage homeownership. In comparison to other countries with higher homeownership such as the United States, Germany has an extensive social housing sector with broad eligibility criteria, high transfer taxes when buying real estate, and no tax deductions for mortgage interest payments by owner-occupiers. We build a life-cycle model with uninsurable income and housing risks and endogenous homeownership in order to quantify the policy impact on homeownership and welfare. Adjusting all three policies has a strong impact on housing tenure choices, closing the gap in homeownership rates between Germany and the United States by about two thirds. At the same time, household welfare would be reduced by moving to a policy regime with low transfer taxes, but it would improve in the absence of social housing, in particular, when coupled with housing subsidies for low-income households.

中文翻译：

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德国的低房屋拥有率—定量探索

摘要

德国的房屋拥有率是发达经济体中最低的国家之一。为了更好地理解这一事实，我们评估了倾向于阻止购房者的特定住房政策的作用。与其他拥有较高房屋所有权的国家（例如美国）相比，德国拥有广泛的社会住房部门，其资格标准范围宽广，购买房地产时的转让税较高，并且不对自住业主支付的抵押贷款税款减免。我们建立了具有不可保险收入和住房风险以及内生房屋所有权的生命周期模型，以便量化政策对房屋所有权和福利的影响。调整所有三项政策都会对住房使用权选择产生重大影响，使德国和美国之间的房屋拥有率差距缩小了三分之二。同时，