Estimating the housing wealth of older home owners in Britain

Household surveys have recently started to collect data on the original pur chase price of owner occupiers' homes. This provides a firmer basis for inv estigating the joint distribution of housing wealth, income and other perso nal characteristics than has hitherto existed. However, a number of difficu lties arise which are discussed in this paper. A method is presented and va lidated, developed in the course of assessing the housing wealth of older h ome owners, for dealing with the specific problems associated with those wh o purchased their properties at discounted prices, whether through the Righ t to Buy or other routes. The method is based on data from the British Hous ehold Panel Survey, and subsequently applied to the UK Family Expenditure S urvey to explore the housing wealth of older people. It also yields estimat es of housing equity for younger people and can be implemented with other s imilar surveys.