Portfolio Choice over the Life-Cycle for Chinese Residents with Risky Housing

We develop a dynamic realistically calibrated life-cycle model to study the optimal portfolio choice for Chinese families with risky housing. We try to find the relationships between household asset allocation and its housing decision, and the effect of housing transaction cost, housing price incremental rate and the lowest level of housing. Our analysis demonstrates that the home ownership rate and housing position are hump-shaped during life-cycle. It means that some households may optimal choose to sell their house, and become renters again at the latter stage of life-cycle. Our analysis also indicate that housing transaction cost crowds out of stockholdings because of protective saving, and housing price incremental rate and the lowest level of housing reduces stockholdings due to the illiquid home equity restrictions.