ANALYSIS OF HOUSING AFFORDABILITY IN SELECTED EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

The Czech Republic is a country with the highest growth of real estate's prices in Europe. The paper is focused on the analysis if this long-term growth of real estate's prices influences the housing affordability, i.e., if the price growth is in balance with the growth of households income and what is the situation in the Czech Republic in comparison to other European countries. Hence, the objective is to analyse the housing affordability in the Czech Republic in relation to the selected European countries and to make a comparison of the situation based on the main ratios. The availability of housing will be find out based on the selected ratios, which will be derived from the prices of apartments, rents, household incomes, mortgages and interest rates. Possible imbalance in the markets of ownership and rent housing will be explored with rent balance (imbalance) indicator, which can be a signal of overvaluation or undervaluation of these housing segments. The structure of real estate markets in selected countries will be also analyzed and the quality of housing based on the main statistical indicators will be found out. The comparison of the housing affordability in the selected countries will be done based on the statistical analysis of the above mentioned indicators.