DISCRIMINATION IN SINGAPORE'S RESIDENTIAL RENTAL MARKET

Abstract

This paper studies explicit discrimination in Singapore’s residential rental market. The study was conducted using rental listings from property listing website, 99.co. It contributes to the existing literature as it deviates from conventional field experiments that were used to detect discrimination in various consumer markets, especially the housing market. In particular, the objectives of this study are to investigate the impact of indicating “All Races Welcome” in a property listing on rental prices, and the extent of the impact across planning regions and property types. In addition, the characteristics of landlords were also studied to examine the extent of impact on rental prices. This paper hopes to shed some light on discriminatory behaviour in Singapore’s residential rental market, given that Singapore is a multicultural country, and harmony between races, ethnic groups and nationalities is crucial in ensuring Singapore’s economic and social development. The first section of the research is conducted with descriptive statistics. Following on, a hedonic regression was used to determine the impact of indicating “All Races Welcome” on rental prices. The findings revealed that landlords who welcome all races would demand a higher rental as compared to landlords who do not welcome all races. This result is constant across planning regions and property types. Furthermore, this paper has also found that the premium is larger if the rental unit is owned by a Non-Chinese landlord. Landlords who are staying in the units together with the tenants will also command a higher premium as compared to units without landlords staying in. The presence of such premium suggests underlying discrimination behaviour during tenant selection process. Discriminatory behaviour should be addressed as it may affect the harmony between diverse communities.