No money, no housing security? The role of intergenerational transfers, savings, and mortgage in mobility within and into insecure housing positions in Hungary

Abstract

The article reviews current housing mobility patterns in Hungary, with specific regard to relocations within the rental sector and mobility from the owner occupied to the rental sector. By doing this, it intends to gain a more profound insight into housing mobility within or into less secure positions in the housing system. The analysis explores the role of factors beyond basic socioeconomic variables, such as access to different sources of housing finance, to housing mobility, through multivariable analysis of representative survey data. It points out how the lack of access to intergenerational transfers, savings, and mortgage leads to the inability of households to exit the rental sector. Besides, it draws attention to formerly mortgaged households moving from homeownership to the rental sector. It discusses the results in the context of Hungary’s super-homeownership tenure structure, the highly ownership-oriented public policies, the lack of effective measures to tackle housing unaffordability and the loosely regulated rental sector. The analysis is based on data from a large sample personal survey conducted in 2018 (N=2650).