Convergence of Housing Markets: European Perspective

The housing market is not only an important component of the national economy; it is also a place of meeting the basic and fundamental needs for the functioning of households. The structure of housing markets and their performance are primarily driven by local and national factors. This results mainly from the specificity of real estate (primarily from its immobility), historical factors, economic conditions, as well as from institutional environment. However, in the process of integration of the European economies, one can see a growing trend towards the unification of the housing markets.

The aim of the paper is to assess the scope and scale of convergence processes in the European housing markets. The study covers the main characteristics of the markets, including: the size of the national housing stock and its ownership structure, the importance of residential properties in households’ assets, and the share of housing expenditure in households’ total consumption expenditure. The occurrence of three most popular types of convergence was investigated: beta, sigma, and gamma convergence.