The Promise and Perils of Using Housing Adverts for Affordability Mapping in Europe

The blog post titled "The Promise and Perils of Using Housing Adverts for Affordability Mapping in Europe," authored by Franziska Sielker and Selim Banabak from the Institute of Spatial Planning at TU Wien, discusses the pressing issue of housing affordability in Europe. It highlights the innovative House4All ESPON project, which aims to create a comprehensive pan-European housing affordability map. This initiative responds to the growing financial burden on households due to rising housing costs and seeks to improve knowledge about affordability challenges through advanced data collection methods.

Housing affordability is measured by comparing housing costs against available household income, which includes rent or mortgage payments, maintenance, and sometimes energy and transportation costs. The standard threshold for affordability is set at 30% to 40% of household income. Households exceeding this threshold are classified as financially overburdened. However, applying this measure at regional levels proves difficult due to a lack of detailed data, as traditional sources like surveys often fail to provide the granular insights needed for precise analysis.

In light of these challenges, researchers are looking to online housing advertisements as a new data source. Platforms like Nestoria and Properstar offer extensive information that can be systematically scraped, including pricing, geolocation, and property characteristics. This approach allows the aggregation and analysis of data to produce average prices or prices per square meter for specific areas, offering greater spatial granularity than traditional survey data. The ESPON House4All project plans to utilize this innovative method, conducting web-scraping exercises across 31 countries from April 2024 to April 2025.

Using housing adverts enables the House4All project to provide a comprehensive mapping of housing offers across Europe. This process will reveal significant disparities in affordability, particularly between renting and selling markets. Regular data scraping will help identify sought-after market segments based on how quickly listings are taken down. Additionally, the real-time nature of these adverts offers insights into fluctuating market conditions that affect newcomers to various regions.

Despite the potential benefits, the approach comes with challenges. Housing adverts typically represent only a segment of the market, excluding social housing and properties at the extremes of the price spectrum. This limitation could obscure the full scope of affordability issues faced by vulnerable populations. Furthermore, while prices from housing adverts provide immediate comparability, they may require harmonization to ensure accurate analysis across different countries, as pricing structures can vary significantly.

Another challenge is the availability of income data, often provided only at an aggregate level. This can lead to reliance on broad averages, which may mask variations within regions. While the project seeks to develop methodologies that account for these income discrepancies, using proxies like GDP per capita poses its own limitations, particularly in urban areas with inflated economic figures.

The use of housing adverts is a promising avenue for improving the understanding of housing affordability in Europe. The House4All ESPON project exemplifies innovative strategies needed to tackle complex social issues. Enhanced collaboration among governments, private sectors, and academic institutions will be vital for improving data access and developing robust analytical techniques. This will ultimately lead to more informed policy decisions aimed at ensuring housing affordability for all.

In conclusion, the House4All project represents a significant step forward in addressing housing affordability challenges through innovative data collection methods. By carefully navigating the associated challenges and refining methodologies, the project has the potential to provide valuable insights into the state of housing affordability across Europe.