Home Ownership and Labor Mobility

Most of our discussion of labor mobility focused on skill specificity. Some recent research highlights one non-skill based source of immobility: Home Ownership. It seems that across the advanced industrialized countries, unemployment rates are higher in communities in which a large proportion of the residents own their own homes than in communities in which residents rent. Because people own their homes, they find it difficult to move when they lose a job because it is difficult to sell the home. Hence, home ownership reduces labor mobility. Or does it?