Housing Cost Stress of Mortgagers and Tenants in Poland

Abstract The economic problems of mortgage takers, especially in light of the global financial crisis, is a very important issue, both from the point of view of housing policy and the stability of the banking sector. The analysis of the situation of mortgagors is usually limited to determining the percentage of mortgages in default. We compared the revealed mortgage repayment problems among Poles (arrears) with the unrevealed ones (such as high housing cost burden, inability to bear unexpected expenses), which we defined as housing cost stress. Next, we compared these problems with those of tenants at market rates. We found that, although we observe only a small percentage of mortgagors who are in arrears with their housing costs in Poland (about 3%), a large proportion of borrowers (about half of them) are in a difficult financial situation. At the same time, we noticed that their situation is still better than that of market rent tenants, because only one in five renters did not experience problems with covering housing costs. Among tenants, singles were much more likely to suffer from housing cost stress.