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Digitalization of the Housing Search: Homeseekers, Gatekeepers, and Market Legibility

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  • Boeing, Geoff

    (Northeastern University)

  • Harten, Julia
  • Sanchez-Moyano, Rocio

Abstract

In recent years, digitalization has reshaped the housing search. Today, online platforms facilitate housing market information exchange and expand the legibility of the housing market for sellers, buyers, landlords, and renters. Such platforms can democratize information access and diversify homeseekers’ information supplies. This in turn can expand choice sets, increase search radii, reduce search costs, and sideline traditional gatekeepers to help homeseekers realize a more efficient housing search with a superior outcome. However, certain market participants benefit more than others, and the promise of digitalization is muted by its drawbacks. This paper explores how these online platforms shape the housing search by influencing information supplies, presentation, and consumption. Tensions arise as old gatekeepers develop new strategies to maintain power in the digital realm and new gatekeepers emerge to capitalize on digital trends. Policymakers can play an important role in maintaining and developing the societal benefits of housing market digitalization while better mitigating its harms.

Suggested Citation

  • Boeing, Geoff & Harten, Julia & Sanchez-Moyano, Rocio, 2023. "Digitalization of the Housing Search: Homeseekers, Gatekeepers, and Market Legibility," SocArXiv 643x2, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:643x2
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/643x2
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Larry DeBoer, 1985. "Resident Age and Housing Search: Evidence From Hedonic Residuals," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 22(5), pages 445-451, October.
    2. Geoff Boeing & Max Besbris & Ariela Schachter & John Kuk, 2021. "Housing Search in the Age of Big Data: Smarter Cities or the Same Old Blind Spots?," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 112-126, January.
    3. Zahra Nasreen & Kristian. J. Ruming, 2021. "Informality, the marginalised and regulatory inadequacies: a case study of tenants’ experiences of shared room housing in Sydney, Australia," International Journal of Housing Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(2), pages 220-246, May.
    4. Geoff Boeing, 2020. "Online rental housing market representation and the digital reproduction of urban inequality," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(2), pages 449-468, March.
    5. Karen Black & Kalima Rose & Sarah Treuhaft, 2011. "When investors buy up the neighborhood: preventing investor ownership from causing neighborhood decline," Community Investments, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, vol. 23(Spr), pages 19-22.
    6. Emily E. Wiemers, 2014. "The Effect of Unemployment on Household Composition and Doubling Up," Working Papers 2014_05, University of Massachusetts Boston, Economics Department.
    7. Maalsen, Sophia & Wolifson, Peta & Rogers, Dallas & Nelson, Jacqueline & Buckle, Caitlin, 2021. "Understanding discrimination effects in private rental housing," SocArXiv jdycg, Center for Open Science.
    8. Emily Wiemers, 2014. "The Effect of Unemployment on Household Composition and Doubling Up," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(6), pages 2155-2178, December.
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    10. Boeing, Geoff & Wegmann, Jake & Jiao, Junfeng, 2020. "Rental Housing Spot Markets: How Online Information Exchanges Can Supplement Transacted-Rents Data," SocArXiv phgqt, Center for Open Science.
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