Housing and Mortgages in Transition Economies

This paper employs an extensive household survey data set covering a wide range of transition countries to empirically characterize the housing choices of households. The paper provides a descriptive overview of the types of dwellings, housing tenure, mode of acquisition, and mortgage prevalence by country. To explain the wide variation in housing and mortgage patterns across countries, empirical models of both acquisition mode (privatized, purchased or built without a bank mortgage, purchased or built with a bank mortgage, inherited or received as a gift, or other mode) and housing tenure choice (rent, own, other) are estimated using limited dependent variable methods. Furthermore, the prevalence of mortgage financing is analyzed. Data used in this study are from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Life in Transition Survey, LITS II, for the year 2010 covering 29 transition countries plus Kosovo