ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the causal processes underlying particular levels of prices, or rates of inflation, by placing the local house price ‘outcome’ in a context of demand and supply factors within each housing market. The local house price is presumed to reflect the balance of supply and demand across the whole local housing market, with tenure switch perhaps acting as a linkage between the observed private housing sector and other tenure groups. The chapter describes some of the issues involved in developing an explanatory framework in terms of housing and labour market interactions at the local scale. G. A. Hughes and B. McCormick have investigated the effect of the housing system on labour mobility and have argued that local authority tenants are most constrained in making long distance moves while mobility is apparently most free for private rental tenants.
