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We argue that the rush to apply multiple regression estimation to time on the market (TOM) durations may have led to important details and idiosyncrasies in local housing market dynamics being overlooked. What is needed is a more careful examination of the fundamental properties of time to sale data. The approach promoted and presented here, therefore, is to provide an examination of housing sale dynamics using a step-by-step approach. We present three hypotheses about TOM: (i) there is nonmonotonic duration dependence in the hazard of sale, (ii) the hazard curve will vary both over time and across intraurban areas providing evidence of the existence of submarkets and (iii) institutional idiosyncrasies can have a profound effect on the shape and position of the hazard curve. We apply life tables, kernel-smoothed hazard functions and likelihood ratio tests for homogeneity to a large Scottish data set to investigate these hypotheses. Our findings have important implications for TOM analysis.In the past 30 years, there have been over 20 published studies of time on the market (TOM) for residential properties. The number of papers doubled in the 1980s, 1 compared with the 1970s. 2 The number doubled again in the 1990s, 3 and there is a good chance that the number of papers will double again by the end of the current decade. 4 This bourgeoning of the literature is partly driven by the increasing popularity of survival analysis techniques per se (assisted by their incorporation into popular statistical software packages) and partly because of the emerging availability of suitable housing data. With respect to the second cause, the present study is a case in point: this is the 378 Pryce and Gibb first large-sample published analysis of residential time to sale in the United Kingdom. The only previous United Kingdom-based paper was the very first in the literature (Cubbins (1974), based on 83 sales in Coventry, England). To our knowledge, all other published studies have used U.S. data.We argue that the rush to apply multiple regression estimation to TOM may have led to important details and idiosyncrasies in local market dynamics being overlooked. What is needed is a more careful examination of the fundamental properties of time-to-sale data. The approach promoted and presented here, therefore, is to provide an examination of housing sale dynamics using a stepby-step approach. Kernel-smoothed nonparametric estimates of the aggregate hazard function (complemented by life table analysis and likelihood ratio tests) are applied to different subgroups of housing sales over different time periods. This anatomy of the selling process reveals insights and caveats previously unexamined in the housing literature-results that can inform future analysis of time to sale and related topics.The starting point for our article is that time to sale cannot be analyzed in the same way as other continuous variables. This is because it is a "duration" variable and hence subject to two crucial characteristics: time dependency and censoring. T...

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This paper draws on recent literature systematising policy failure and applies it to recent UK experience in terms of one key example of ongoing welfare reform, colloquially known as the 'bedroom tax' introduced in April 2013. Espoused as a response to the problem of under-occupation in the housing sector, the UK Coalition Government reduced the housing benefit eligible to working age social tenants deemed to be consuming too much housing (14% for one spare bedroom and 25% for more than one). The policy was but one element of the Government's wave of housing benefit reforms aimed at simplifying the system, incentivising work and substantially cutting costs. While there is undoubtedly wider support for the idea of the general welfare reforms, the bedroom tax has been both unpopular and has not worked in terms of its key propositions. Drawing on evidence more than a year after implementation, this paper stands back and considers possible multiple policy failures associated with the bedroom tax. This allows more detailed consideration of the wider housing-related reforms to the welfare benefits system and its place in the broader welfare reform and housing benefit debate more generally.