Home ownership has become unaffordable for many Americans, while elites and corporations have increasingly purchased homes as investments. The tension between the value of housing as both an essential and a commodity influences how people come to understand the fairness of housing prices. Thus, my study asks: what type of buyer do Americans believe is the fairest to sell a house to? I use a paired conjoint survey experiment on a nationally representative sample of U.S.-born adults to examine the personal attributes Americans ascribe to who they believe should be able to buy a house.
