Urban Housing Vacancy Rate and Its Influence Factors

Urban housing vacancy rate is one of the important indicators to reflect supply and demand condition in the real estate market. The current state of Chinese domestic studies is lack in a scientific and uniform definition on the Housing vacancy as well as the method for measuring it. This has resulted in great difficulty in comparing the housing vacancy of Chinese cities with their counterparts in rest of the world. Consequently, uniform and reasonable definition needs to be established for further measurement and monitoring of the Chinese housing vacancy conditions, which will be helpful for governmental intervention in the real estate market, and preventing the market risk. Through a Chinese literature review and comparing with oversea studies, this article first develops a definition for housing vacancy and the housing vacancy rate, and then analyzes the factors that can influence the change of the vacancy rate. Taking Hangzhou as an example, the paper measures the housing vacancy rate by a field survey in 2008, and compares with the data in other countries, which will make significant sense of judging the development of the real estate market in Hangzhou.