Urban Economics and Planning

Urban Economics and Planning

Developing a Conceptual Model of the Phenomenon of Vacant Houses: A Systematic Review

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
1 Associate Professor, Urbanism Department, Faculty of Art and Architecture, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran
2 Ph. D. Candidate, Urbanism Department, Faculty of Art and Architecture, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran
Abstract
Introduction 
On a global scale, since the financial crisis in 2008, housing capitalization and speculation have expanded in geography, generalized in political economy, and embedded in the regulatory system [1]. But the existence of vacant houses in different countries of the world and our country is not a problem in nature. What is challenging in this context is the average rate of vacant houses in the country and its comparison with the world average and the natural rate of vacant houses. Despite the significant difference, the hypothesis of a capitalistic view of housing and speculation of housing in the country is proposed (authors, 1402). Vacant houses as a sign of population decline, have negative effects on a neighborhood in terms of economy, security, and urban management [2]. Vacant houses do not occur in useful clusters. Instead of urban cancer that will disappear by abandoning the decaying neighborhood, they are a kind of urban measles [3]. Untended vacant homes can cause a variety of problems in a neighborhood, including damaging the landscape and increasing the risks of building collapse, and fires. They can also lead to poor sanitation due to illegal dumping and parasitic animals, or become breeding grounds for crime. Especially in residential areas with high density, these complications can be very serious [5]. According to the report of the Statistics Center in 2016, there were 2.6 million vacant houses in the country and they were abandoned without any use [6]. On one hand, lack of reliably in the capital market, housing as a safe commodity, belief in the lack of housing price reduction among investors, increased sanctions and industry stagnation, and lack of investment in it; on the other hand, the arrival of part of the facilities granted in the form of quick-return projects has provided the housing sector with the boom of speculation and the transformation of housing into a capital good, which is one of the main factors of the increase in housing prices in Iran [7]. The intellectual, cultural, and economic contexts of the housing issue in the world are different from the view of this issue in Iran, which has made it necessary to analyze the vacant housing issues in the country; by looking at the world literature.
Materials and Methods
The method of this research is a systematic review of theoretical literature in the field of research. The difference between a descriptive review (common in current research) and a systematic review is that a systematic review examines all the results (after applying a certain filter) from the database specified in the research, and therefore no important source in the subject. Research is not abandoned. For this purpose, the Google Scholar database was determined as a research database in both Persian and English languages. Then, by examining various texts in the field of vacant houses, the keywords were selected as follows, and after searching the Google Scholar database, using each of the keywords below, the following results were obtained in the field of Persian sources, which were due to limitation, all investigated. In the English language, in the first stage, due to the multiplicity of results and ambiguity in their relevance to the subject, sources with at least 40 references (i.e. major and main sources) were selected. This made it possible to get acquainted with the specialized literature on the subject, keywords, and main concepts in the existing research. In the next steps, the criteria for entering sources into the analysis process was simplified and the number of results expanded. In general, before this, no article in the country has systematically examined the subject of vacant houses, and therefore this article is the first of its kind.
Findings
The information of the sources can be summarized and presented in several ways: Place and approach: Latin sources have been used in China, America, Mexico, Australia, Korea, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Japan, Canada, Malaysia, France, and Germany, respectively. Therefore, different countries of the world are facing and involved in the issue of vacant houses at different levels. Countries that have had more extensive housing provision programs have faced a higher level of housing speculation. Among these countries, only in Germany, the research shows that there is no evidence of housing speculation (due to the low ratio of housing prices to average income), and monitoring is recommended to prevent this in the future. Content: The content of Persian sources is either trying to legitimize taxing and criminalizing vacant houses, or they are looking for a quantitative analysis of the number of vacant houses and comparing it with the world-class and arguing that it is illogical and unfair. Latin sources are focused on causes and consequences consider solutions based on specific local contexts, and often avoid presenting a single version. The main causes: Persian sources consider the main factors in the phenomenon of housing speculation to be in three areas: changes in liquidity in the country, real exchange rate, and changes in interest on housing facility deposits. The government is obliged to control these factors when changes occur to prevent secondary effects on the housing market. The main causes from the point of view of Latino sources have been problems in the payment of housing loans, government policies and projects, weak legislation and legal loopholes, as well as inflationary expectations based on the past increase in housing prices. The main consequences: the consequences have not been examined in Persian sources, and the consequences in Latin sources often include the increase in housing prices, the rapid acceleration of housing prices in the future, the decrease in the value of housing mortgages in banks, the bankruptcy of local banks, and economic stagnation. The main solutions: the solution of different countries of the world in the issue of vacant houses is generally based on the growth and development of providing city services and in return for that, the tax on capital gains and, accordingly, the tax on vacant houses, in which case the public opinion will convince to pay tax and will have more cooperation with the government. Another major solution is the comprehensive real estate and housing system with executive guarantees, which municipalities are more qualified to implement. The main solutions of Latin resources include management by land banks, planning of housing and employment in the vicinity of each other, planned supply of land, monitoring of inflationary expectations of different groups of society and finally levying tax on capital gains and ultimately effective vacant house tax under special conditions. However, in our country, the partial solution of collecting taxes from vacant houses has received more attention. Another major result is the differences between Persian and Latin sources: Persian sources often consider the government as the main effective catalyst in this matter, without deep involvement with the main causes and behind the scenes of the housing being empty, and have immediately moved towards partial solutions or financial and punitive solutions. In Persian sources, the consequences of empty housing have not been investigated, but Latin sources have often tried to open ways for local movement in each specific field towards a context-oriented solution in an analytical way and by rooting in the field of causes or consequences. In some cases, it has been observed that Persian sources have used specialized terms and expressions of the subject such as market friction (failure of alignment of supply to demand), periods of boom and bust, and tax on capital gains, without paying attention to their main content, and thus the subject literature has been superficially transferred to the country.
Conclusion
In the context of houses remaining empty, Latin sources mainly find the main cause in their location, the extrapolability of housing price changes compared to the past and inflationary expectations resulting from it [14, 16, 48, 63] as well as the defective and non-dynamic system of allocating housing loans in a way that encourages housing speculation [13, 18, 50, 70-71]. But in Iran, the lack of a reliable market for investment and maintaining the value of money and the safety of housing as a capital good [7] along with the lack of sufficient government supervision over property ownership [6] is the main reason for the existence of housing speculation. By examining the sources, it seems that more radical solutions than levying taxes on vacant houses should be considered to solve this problem:
1. The jurisprudential and Islamic obscenity of housing speculation should be emphasized to the public with the help of the clergy community and with the cooperation of the mass media and the Ministry of Road and Urban Development. 
2. Stray capitals should be efficiently managed by the government so that they do not end up in housing speculation. 
3. Completion of information in the country’s comprehensive real estate and housing system by individuals should have an executive guarantee and significant and effective encouragement and punishment. 
4. Joint commissions should be formed between the relevant institutions in this matter (including the Fiscal Affairs Organization, the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development, the Municipality, the Attorney General’s Office, and the Islamic Propaganda Organization), to prevent parallel work or neglect of the Executive body.
5. There is a research gap in the field of finding the causes and consequences of vacant houses in different cities of the country. It is necessary to localize the relevant theoretical literature and then practical solutions.
6. Solutions such as establishing land banks, forming a comprehensive and up-to-date database of vacant houses, planning of housing and employment integrally and respecting their mixing, taxing capital gains, and transparency of government policies to prevent housing vacancy are among evolutions that their possibility can be evaluated in the local context of Iranian cities.
Keywords

Subjects


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Volume 4, Issue 4
Autumn 2024
Pages 242-261

  • Receive Date 15 January 2024
  • Revise Date 19 February 2024
  • Accept Date 23 February 2024