Why do skilled migrants’ housing tenure outcomes and tenure aspirations vary among different family lifecycle stages?

Previous studies mainly focused on rural-urban migrants' homeownership preferences from discrete life events. Few studies concentrated on skilled migrants' homeownership outcomes and aspirations from family lifecycle theory. To fill these gaps, this paper, based on a questionnaire survey in Guangzhou, used the Probit regression models to investigate why skilled migrants' homeownership outcomes and aspirations vary among different family lifecycle stages. It found that skilled migrants in the bachelor stage and newly married couple stage are less likely to become homeowners in Guangzhou; the possible reason is that they lack the adequate wealth to purchase housing due to lower income and insufficient savings. With the income and savings increasing, skilled migrants in the full and empty nest stages are more likely to become homeowners in Guangzhou. In addition, skilled migrants in the bachelor stage, full nest stage, and empty nest stage are more eager to access homeownership; the possible reasons include homeownership accumulating wealth rapidly, homeownership providing housing stability, and homeownership tied with quality educational resources, and giving children housing support. Skilled migrants in newly married couples have a higher tendency to rent housing because they do not decide to settle in Guangzhou permanently, and renting housing is more flexible. These findings can provide strong evidence of the gap between skilled migrants' housing tenure outcomes and aspirations in China's super cities from the family lifecycle theory. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd.