Impact of Changes in Homeownership Perceptions on Housing Finance Demand and House Prices

This study investigates how changes in homeownership perceptions shape desired mortgage borrowing and house prices, and draws policy implications. Using the Korea Housing Finance Corporation’s 2024 Housing Finance and Bogeumjari Loan Survey, we estimated a Tobit two-stage residual inclusion system of simultaneous equations to identify the effects of demographic and economic traits, housing attributes, intentions to use policy loans, and changes in homeownership perceptions on these interrelated demands. The results show that higher desired house prices raise latent mortgage demand, while larger desired loan amounts, in turn, increase desired house prices, indicating that the willingness to leverage directly enters price setting. Intentions to use policy mortgages significantly expand latent desired borrowing and, via this channel, lift desired prices. Notably, among single-home ownership perception changes, heightened concern about rising interest rates is associated with higher desired prices, which is consistent with an expectation channel that pulls forward purchase timing. Overall, the determinants of desired mortgage demand and price formation are driven less by endowments than by expectation- and institution-based factors, such as rate beliefs, policy-credit intentions, and owner-occupancy versus investment motives. Policy should move beyond blunt macroprudential tools toward fine-tuned “quantity-rule” adjustments to policy mortgage parameters (rates, limits, guarantee conditions) while managing rate expectations and leverage behavior through integrated housing-finance design.