The impact of household characters on choosing a house: the housing unit and quality of access to urban facilitiesCase study: Tehran City

The "life cycle" theory is the most important tool for understanding the relationship among characteristics of housing and households, which reflects the behavior of households in the city. The theory, households are defined based on characteristics such as household size, number of students, employment status, income, age of household, etc. Every household, based on what are their characters, has different priorities in housing choice. The purpose of this study is to analyze that characteristics of households are effective on housing choice, which was developed in two parts: quality of housing unit and access to urban facilities.

To measure the variables, the city of Tehran was selected as a case study and the research data were obtained from two sources; the data for households characters was obtained from the households expenditure-income survey which w implemented annually by the National Statistics Center and the locations of urban facilities were gained by urban development plan of Tehran.By using a univariate multi-nominal method and cluster analysis, effective characteristics in the housing selection model were identified from the two groups of characteristics of quality of "housing unit" and "access to urban facilities", effective variables in selecting "housing unit" are, area of hous unit, the type of structure building, variables in "access to urban facilities" included access to educational services and public transportation system, which created a total of 6 options for selecting residential units and 8 options for accessing urban facilities. Then, the relationship between household characteristics and housing selection was performed using the multivariate regression method in R software.

The analysis of the model revealed that residential units with an area of ​​60-90 square meters are the most attractive ones for households with students. Also, increasing the income decile of households, the tendency of households to live near educational spaces and distance from the public transportation system increases. Households with the employment status of a caregiver in a non-simple working group are more inclined to choose to live in houses close to the public transportation system than households with a caregiver, which indicates the difference in financial capacity between the two groups of households.

The relationship between students and the area of ​​residential units has been proven in research background, but in this study, a specific range for the unit area(60-90 square meters) is proved for households with students. However, the relationship was not proved in other areas of housing characters such as the situation of access to urban facilities.Another important conclusion has occurred in the relation between the group of variables "residence" and "household characteristics". Only the variables related to job and income are effective in choosing a place of residence and other social and demographic characteristics of households do not have a significant relationship with the household location that can be reflected in living conditions, lack of identity and prestige in the city's neighborhoods, social segregation in Tehran, incorrect policies in the field of public goods and inappropriate housing distribution conditions in this city.