The Low-Income Housing Market in Jordan. International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis, Vol.2, No.3, pp233-252, 2009.

The housing sector in Jordan suffers from a lack of balance between supply and demand, in general, and from the inability to meet the demands of low-income households, in specific. The main objective of this research is to explore the potentials and obstacles facing low-income housing supply. It is shown that there is undersupply in low-income housing. The attributes of the supply-demand model are explored using qualitative and quantitative research methods. The first research step was archival. Findings indicated a presence of major obstacles facing developers and hindering them from supplying low-income housing. The second research step included face-to-face interviews with the local developers in three major cities: Amman, Irbid and Zarqa. They were interviewed using a semi-structured and open-ended questionnaire. Results indicated that most plausible causality of undersupply of low-income housing is due to macro-environment attributes: controllable - management (lack of human resources and capacity building), real estate (lack of marketing skills and sales advertising), technology and construction industry (inaccessible appropriate building technology and affordable construction), land ownership and site selection (limited to the developers geographical area); and uncontrollable - financing (small capital operation and difficulties in bank loans and lending), government policies (lack of incentives, tax exemptions, and rigid laws and regulations), and social and cultural (social needs requires certain spatial arrangements and rejection of borrowing from financial institutions for religious reasons). Increasing the supply of low-income housing can be achieved by various means. Statistical inferences will be needed in a future study to complement the present study?s investigation of low-income housing production in Jordan.