ABSTRACT
Housing is the most important and peculiar of commodities. In the United States about one-seventh of all personal consumption expenditure goes for housing exclusive of household operation and house furnishings. Residential real estate accounts for slightly more than half of the nation's fixed capital stock, and around one-quarter to one-third of gross private domestic investment is made up of residental construction. Mortgage lending has varied from about one-quarter to two-fifths of all funds raised in U.S. credit markets. It is doubtless the case that no item of consumption is so intimately bound up with the lives of individuals as their dwelling unit.
