User Costs and Housing Expenses: Towards a more Comprehensive Approach to Affordability

Recently housing affordability has reached the agenda in Flanders and the Netherlands, giving a good reason to present a review of the concept of affordability and different definitions. The concept of short-term affordability, which is concerned with financial access to a dwelling and is based on cash flows, is combined with the concept of long...

A budget approach for comparing housing affordability

In this paper the affordability of housing in the Belgian region of Flanders and the Netherlands is analyzed, using both the expense-to-income ratio and residual income as indicators of affordability. Residual income is obtained by deducting net housing expenses from disposable income, whereas the former is the ratio of net housing expenses to...