ABSTRACT
This book is concerned with the finance of owner-occupation, and it is therefore helpful to begin with a brief analysis of types of housing tenure and patterns of tenure, comparing the position in Britain with that in the rest of the world. This chapter also includes a discussion of the relationship between housing tenure, which can be regarded as a real economic variable, and finance for house purchase, which is a monetary variable. Obviously the two variables are linked, but, as will be shown in this and the next chapter, the links are somewhat tenuous, with the housing finance market being more affected by fiscal and monetary factors than by housing factors.
