patrick.net

Renting vs. Owning
Much of the country's housing policy is based on the belief that homeownership confers all kinds of benefits to people and communities.
But research featured last week in the online journal of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School indicates homeowners are no happier, or more civic-minded, than renters. What's more, the homeowners are likely to be heavier.
Grace Wong Bucchianeri, a Wharton assistant professor of real estate, who purchased her first home four years ago, says she has learned firsthand that homeownership is not all it's cracked up to be. She was curious about the link between homeownership and well-being, so she analyzed a survey of 600 Franklin County, Ohio, women taken in 2005, when the bull market was at its peak.
At first glance, the findings reflect the conventional wisdom that homeowners tend to be more satisfied than renters with their lives, homes and neighborhoods. But these differences all but disappeared once Bucchianeri used tax records and census data to control for factors like income and housing values.
"Overall, I find little evidence that homeowners are happier by any of the following definitions: life satisfaction, overall mood, overall feeling, general moment-to-moment emotions (i.e., affect) and affect at home," she wrote in the undated working paper. "The average homeowner, however, consistently derives more pain (but no more joy) from their house and home. Although they are also more likely to be 12 pounds heavier and report a lower health status and less joy from health, controlling for the less favorable health status does not change the results."
And that was before housing prices tanked.

 /Found at American Banker

Authored By Allison Bisbey Colter

 As is true in most of these studies it doesn't sound like the sample size is a statistically significant cross section of America so it's hard to take any results seriously.  Still I thought the results were pretty funny.

#housing