The role of housing market fluctuations in the economic security of city residents (case study: low-income families of Tehran metropolis)

Planning and housing researchers and experts including Mitlin (2007), Al-Aghabari et al. (2011), Litman (2016), Oraj (2019), Ziyari et al. (2019), Arshin and Sarwar (2016), have addressed the issue of housing for low-income groups. The aim of the current research is to achieve the main hypothesis of the research, that is, investigating the consequences of the housing economic crisis on the stable security of low-income households (in this research, low-income households are the ones that, due to low monthly salaries or temporary and permanent unemployment, cannot afford housing as their basic need, either in the form of buying, renting or they do not have a mortgage) in the metropolis of Tehran, so that the main economic factors playing a role in the fluctuations of the housing market and as a result of the increase in housing prices in Tehran will be evaluated.

The current research is of applied type and its method is descriptive-analytical. In order to collect information and data, library methods, electronic databases, as well as field studies, interviews and researcher-made questionnaires were employed. The statistical population consists of experts in the field of housing, urban planners (including professors and students of urban planning) and housing experts working in municipalities and urban planning department of Tehran. Questionnaires and interviews were completed virtually and through various communication channels. 100 urban planning and housing specialists in Tehran were selected as samples based on snowball sampling. By using virtual snowball sampling, a number of samples were contacted and interviewed and questionnaires were completed. The general method of completing the questionnaires and interviews was exponential sampling without discrimination. After completing the questionnaires, which included 30 main items about the main topic of the research and 6 questions about the level of information of the samples about the research topic and 5 questions about their characteristics, SPSS26 software and descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage) and inferential statistics (one-sample t-test, Friedman) were used to analyze the data, and Cronbach's alpha was used to measure the reliability of the questionnaire. The value of alpha in the 30 main items of the research was 0.918, which showed the internal reliability of the questions.

The results show that there are items playing a role in the problem discussed including the lack of access to affordable housing for citizens, fluctuations in housing prices and household savings, housing construction, the role of municipalities and the increase in housing prices, the role of builders in the fluctuations of the housing market, land prices and its impact. The presence of brokers in the housing market and the increase in housing prices, the lack of firm rules in determining housing prices, and the prevalence of speculation play a role in housing price fluctuations in Tehran. The results of the prioritization of housing economic crises show that the presence of brokers in the housing market with an average rating of (7.70) is the most and the land price and its effect on housing price fluctuations is the least effective items.

 The results show that the economic factors that play a role in housing price fluctuations have influenced the stable security of low-income households in Tehran, and the effect of each of the economic factors that play a role in housing price fluctuations on the stable security of low-income households is different, and the presence of brokers in the housing market is ranked first and the lack of access to affordable housing is ranked last in terms of importance.