Loomio
Fri 24 Apr 2015 1:15AM

Tenure of household

SD Sophie Davies Public Seen by 385

The tenure of household data from the census indicates whether households living in private dwellings own their home (with or without a mortgage), have it in a family trust (with or without a mortgage), rent it, or occupy it rent-free. This data relates to the usual living situation of households. This data is important for measuring trends over time, including changes in the level of home ownership.

We are considering changes to tenure of household due to concern about data quality and gaps in the information being collected.

A perceived information gap is that no data is collected on ownership of dwellings that are not a person’s or household’s usual residence, and the location and use made of these dwellings. This information would be helpful for understanding changes in home ownership rates and assessing under use of dwellings.

There is also concern that the family trust question on the dwelling form does not capture all of these situations correctly. Addressing this issue may require changes to questionnaire design, or to the information provided to help respondents answer this question. Another issue is that no information was provided in the ownership question on how respondents with a licence to occupy (eg people living in self-care units in retirement villages) should answer.

A disadvantage of making changes to tenure of household would be that it would reduce the comparability of the data with previous data, making it less reliable for measuring changes in home ownership over time, which is of particularly high interest.

Our current recommendations relating to tenure of household

  • The collection of information on tenure of household is required by law under the Statistics Act 1975 so this information must be collected in the census.
  • We recommend exploring options for improving the information collected on tenure of household, including aspects relating to family trusts and licences to occupy.

See our preliminary view of 2018 Census content (page 49) for a more detailed discussion on tenure of household information.

See 2013 Census information by variable for information on the tenure of household variable

T

tina (facilitator) Tue 19 May 2015 6:05AM

Hi @kimollivier can you clarify your comment on undercount. If it's the overall total for tenure of household, this relates to households in occupied private dwellings. This is a different number to the number of dwellings, and a different number to the number of private dwellings. Some private dwellings don’t contain a household ie no one lives there.

Regarding processing, all of the census data was checked thoroughly during processing and evaluation, to ensure that it met quality standards and is suitable for use. These quality checks included edits.

Does this help?

I've been finding out about the valuation roll, will respond in the next day or so.

RM

Rod McHugh Thu 21 May 2015 1:35AM

Licence to Occupy would be useful to separate out as a Tenure Type as this form of tenure is likely to become more common.

T

tina (facilitator) Thu 21 May 2015 4:50AM

Hi @kimollivier sorry for the delay in replying. I've been asking around and found that the valuation roll has been thoroughly assessed for Statistics NZ's own use in terms of which variables are included (what their conceptual basis is), how information is collected and updated including frequency etc.

While some use is made elsewhere, we concluded that it does not provide complete and up-to-date information on tenure of households (and tenure holder). Plus we have a legal obligation to collect this.

So then, what are the data quality issues or information gaps to address? Do you use census family trust information?

I can’t answer whether Statistics NZ are able to procure the dataset and publish summary statistics; you do have the option of formalising your request into a submission (which will add weight to your request).

KO

Kim Ollivier Thu 21 May 2015 9:20PM

The benefit of using a property database such as the valuation roll is that individual properties are identified. This enables a much better model to be built for spatial analysis because the location of the properties to the road network can also be used to account for more realistic distances and access to facilities. Instead of using averages we can use actual values from the valuation roll details. The final result is aggregated into zones, hotspots, means and so on. I do agree that secondary attributes in the valuation rolls are not maintained and many have been dropped.

It does provide a second independent source of a dwelling count that could be used to validate the census dwelling counts.

T

tina (facilitator) Fri 26 Jun 2015 5:54AM

Hi all

Note that next Tues 30 June is when this Loomio consultation finishes and submissions are due.

Have a lovely weekend!
Tina