Petr Sunega

Post-Socialist Housing Systems in Europe: Housing Welfare Regimes by Default?

This article develops a conceptual framework derived from welfare regime and concomitant literatures to interpret housing reform in post-socialist European countries. In it, settled power structures and collective ideologies are necessary prerequisites for the creation of distinctive housing welfare regimes with clear roles for the state, market and households. Although the defining feature of post-socialist housing has been mass-privatisation to create super-homeownership societies, the emphatic retreat of the state that this represents has not been replaced by the creation of the institutions or cultures required to create fully financialised housing markets. There is, instead, a form of state legacy welfare in the form of debt-free home-ownership, which creates a gap in housing welfare that has been partially filled by households in the form of intergenerational assistance (familialism) and self-build housing. Both of these mark continuities with the previous regime. The latter is especially common in south-east Europe where its frequent illegality represents a form of anti-state housing. The lack of settled ideologies and power structures suggests that these housing welfare regimes by default will persist as part of a process that resembles a path-dependent ‘transformation’ rather than ‘transition’.

Labour Mobility and Housing The Impact of Housing Tenure and Housing Affordability on Labour Migration in the Czech Republic

This article examines whether housing tenure and regional differences in housing affordability have an impact on labour mobility. This relationship is important for understanding the sources of structural unemployment and impediments to economic growth. Using two sample surveys from the Czech Republic, this research reveals that at the individual level housing tenure is the most powerful factor determining willingness to change residence for employment reasons. A time-series regression analysis reveals that the impact of housing affordability on observed interregional migration patterns is relatively weak and that this effect is concentrated among the highly educated seeking employment in the capital, Prague. These results demonstrate that housing tenure has a significant impact on labour migration plans in case of unemployment and that the dynamic impact of regional differences in housing affordability on labour mobility is concentrated within the most highly skilled segment of the labour force.

Who actually decides? Parental influence on the housing tenure choice of their children

We focus on the role of within-family socialisation and the relationship between socialisation and resource transfers in the intergenerational transmission of housing preferences, the formation of familial housing attitudes and thus the reproduction of a normative housing tenure ladder across generations in Czech society. We show that resource transfers and the within-family socialisation of housing preferences, including preferences concerning housing tenure, are closely interconnected. In other words, parental influence on decision to buy own housing (and on housing preferences in general) of their adult children through socialisation is stronger if there is an (actual or assumed) intergenerational resource transfer. This has several implications for how housing markets and systems work. The paper draws on findings from qualitative, quantitative and experimental studies.

The impact of housing tenure in supporting ageing in place: exploring the links between housing systems and housing options for the elderly

The aim of paper is to reveal the link between the scope of housing aid designed to support ageing in place and the housing system. The main research question is whether the structure of the housing stock according to housing tenure has an impact on diversity and innovations in the supply of public housing subsidies and the housing options available to the elderly. The research is conducted on a sample of eight European countries that substantially differ in terms of their housing and welfare system: Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Italy. These countries were represented in the international project HELPS that primarily focuses on implementation of innovative pilot actions in selected EU states that would increase the autonomy of vulnerable people. After controlling for the effects of several external factors, the results show that the tenure-based structure of housing stock may have a significant impact on the dependent variable, which is the diversity and innovativeness of housing subsidies and options for the elderly. Specifically, in countries with a lower homeownership rate and a higher share of rental housing there is also a greater probability that the supply of housing subsidies and options available to the elderly will be wider and will involve more innovative features.

Public Housing in the Post-Socialist States of Central and Eastern Europe: Decline and an Open Future

One key consequence of give-away privatizations was that public housing in most post-socialist states declined within a few years to a residual share of total housing market. Despite the large differences in public/social housing policies introduced after 1995, this article will show that that almost all new social housing measures proved to be unsustainable, ineffective and often had the unintended consequence of further enhancing homeownership tenure in post-socialist housing systems. The reasons for the limited success of new social housing policies are attributed to broader historical and institutional factors, such as the ‘privatization trap’, the ‘decentralization paradox’, the impact of the informal economy and a strong socialist legacy in housing policies. These findings contribute to the study of how post-socialist housing systems emerged, and reveal how short-term policies can produce long-term structural change and can become a barrier to effective and sustainable social housing policies.

Market-Based Housing Finance Efficiency in the Czech Republic

Abstract The article aims to analyse housing finance efficiency in the Czech Republic, especially so called ‘intermediation efficiency’. ‘Intermediation efficiency’ applies to a set of institutional factors, risks (such as interest rate, credit and liquidity risks), government subsidies and legislative conditions that affect the cost of intermediating housing loans. The methodology of the research combined quantitative and qualitative surveys among mortgage lenders and housing-savings banks in the Czech Republic with an analysis of secondary data. The purpose of the research was to get an idea about how efficient the market-based housing finance in the Czech Republic is and to point out its potential weaknesses and shortcomings. Despite several shortcomings described in this article, the ‘intermediation efficiency’ of financial institutions providing housing loans in the Czech Republic could be considered relatively high.

Reasoning behind choices: rationality and social norms in the housing market behaviour of first-time buyers in the Czech Republic

Abstract The main objective of this paper is to draw attention to the influence of social norms on housing market behaviour. The research is based on an in-depth qualitative study of first-time buyers in the Czech Republic. We found systemic deviations from economically rational behaviour (as defined by mainstream housing economic theory) that stem from the influence of a dominant housing social norm about what constitutes the ‘right’ housing tenure. We show how the influence of a social norm constrains financial, pragmatic, utility- or investment-based considerations of Czech home-buyers. Sociology can thus significantly contribute to recent econometric research about sources of housing market instability.

Housing restitution policies among post-socialist countries: explaining divergence

The purpose of this paper is to explain why post-socialist countries adopted different housing restitution strategies after the change of regimes across the region. Restitution refers here to the process of returning property or compensating for property expropriated by the communist regime to its previous owners or their descendants. This paper provides a brief overview, assessment and categorisation of housing property restitution policies using a sample of 14 post-socialist countries, but it primarily aims to contribute to the general understanding of the evolution of post-socialist housing systems. The authors demonstrate that the decision of governments whether or not to adopt a policy of mass give-away privatisation of public housing probably had the biggest impact on which property restitution strategy, if any, was applied.

Homeownership, Mobility, and Unemployment: Evidence from Housing Privatization

Homeownership is believed to cause higher unemployment. This is because homeowners face higher mobility costs that limit their job search to local labor markets. Empirical tests of this prediction have yielded mixed results so far, possibly due to the endogeneity of homeownership. This paper documents that the privatization of public housing in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain resulted in a quasi-experimental assignment of homeownership to individual households. This facilitates a new test of the effects of homeownership on mobility and unemployment. We find only weak evidence that homeowners are less willing to move and no evidence of higher unemployment risks relative to renters.

Poor and Vulnerable Households in Private Renting

This chapter demonstrates that market (private) tenants differ from the rest of the population in almost all former post-socialist EU member states by their lower age and higher odds of being unemployed. However, in most countries in the sample, the majority of most poor and vulnerable households tend to be homeowners or public tenants rather than tenants in private rental housing. When dwellings are offered by the private sector as rentable housing for the poor, they are often of substandard quality and located in segregated areas. Informality, very low tenure security, short-term tenure, spatial segregation, and sometimes overpricing are significant barriers to the wider use of the private rental sector to house vulnerable households in post-socialist countries.