Changes in the Affordability of Housing for Sale in Regional Capitals in Poland

This article discusses the issue of the affordability of housing intended for ownership. The main objective of the paper is to assess changes in the value of the composite indicator of the affordability of housing for sale. The research covered the period from 2010 to 2023, which was dictated by the availability of data; at the time of creating the database, complete data for the year 2024 was still not available, while alternative sources of information significantly differed in the manner of data processing and considerably misrepresented research results. The spatial scope of the study covered 18 cities that are regional capitals (in the Polish nomenclature, these are so-called voivodeship cities). The paper is structured as follows: the first part briefly discusses the housing situation in Poland, then the study presents a literature review on the methodology of research on housing affordability, and, in the final part, the results of the conducted research are shown and discussed. The paper also points to selected factors and determinants that have had a significant impact on changes in housing affordability. Significant limitations of the employed methodology were also addressed, most notably the nature of the data used in the calculations. It was pointed out, among other things, that state interventionism in the field of housing policy – in particular programmes supporting households and aimed at improving creditworthiness – result in an excessive stimulation of demand for housing, which, in conditions of rigid housing supplies, causes a rapid increase in housing prices. Given the lower rate of changes in wages and the rising cost of living for households, housing affordability is deteriorating.