Housing demand in Spain according to dwelling type: Microeconometric evidence

This paper presents a study of the housing demand in Spain according to the type of tenure (rental or purchase) and building (single family or multifamily), based on microeconometric data from 1999. Our approach uses a generalization of the two-stage Heckman estimation to correct the bias of the sample selection, with a mixed logit multinomial model in the first stage. The results obtained show differences in the housing demand between owners and renters according to the building type, with larger values of income elasticity and demand price in rented dwellings. Furthermore, the differences between our results and those of earlier well-known papers that deal with the U.S. and U.K. housing markets appear to be due to differences between the housing markets, and do not stem from differences in econometric specification.