1. House prices have risen faster than household income in most countries

Number of years over which cumulated average household disposable income equals the average price of a 100m2 dwelling

Source: Bricongne, Turrini and Pontuch (2019), Assessing House Prices: Insights from “Houselev”, a Dataset of Price Level Estimates and OECD Analytical Database.


  1. Housing supply has not kept pace with demand

Percentage change in real disposable income and real housing investment since the early 2000s

Note: Early 2000’s proxied by 2000-04 average and compared to most recent period i.e. 2017-21 average

Source: OECD Analytical Database


  1. The footprint of real estate varies considerably across countries

Residential and commercial/industrial built-up area per capita in functional urban areas, sq. m/cap, 2021

Source: Banquet, A. et al. (2022), “Monitoring land use in cities using satellite imagery and deep learning”


  1. Planned new construction is low compared to the building stock in most countries

Ratio of building permits to the dwelling stock, 2021 or latest available year

Source: European Mortgage Federation (EMF) - Hypostat 2022


  1. Housing supply responsiveness varies across but also within countries

Estimated metropolitan housing supply elasticities

Note: Long-term supply elasticities derived from inverse supply elasticities obtained by regressing changes in real house prices (from 2003 to 2017) on long-run changes in residential construction proxied by local population and instrumented using exogenous labour demand shifts and fertility rates.

Source: Bétin and Ziemann (2019), “How responsive are housing markets in the OECD? Regional level estimates”


  1. Land-use decisions are often complicated by fragmentation and overlap across levels of government

OECD Land-use Governance Indicator, 2019

Note: High values indicate fragmented decision making and/or overlap across levels of government.

Source: OECD (2021), Brick by Brick: Building Better Housing Policies


  1. House prices evolve very differently within countries

Regional house price index, 2022 (2005=100)

Source: OECD Regional House Price Database.


  1. The spread of working from home practices makes core urban areas less attractive

House price evolution in small adminstrative units (SAUs) within functional urban areas (FUAs) of 1.5million people or more

Source: OECD Regions and Cities at a Glance 2022.


  1. Urban house price gradients have flattened in most large functional urban areas

House price index, difference from population-weighted average within functional urban areas (FUAs) and distance to high density cluster (km)

Note: The graph shows the deviation of house prices from the Functional Urban Area’s (FUA) population-weighted average house price as a function of the distance to the respective urban centre, averaged across locations of monocentric cities with a population of more than 1.5 million.

Source: Ziemann et al. (2023, forthcoming), Urban house price gradients in the post-COVID-19 era


  1. Access to green space differs within and across urban areas

Median square meters of green space accessible within 15-minute walk, by distance to the city center

Source: OECD calculations based on Urban Access Framework Database and International Transport Forum (2019), Benchmarking Accessibility in Cities


  1. Access to social and economic amenities differs considerably within many large urban areas

Median number of restaurants accessible by public transport within 30 minutes, by distance to the city center

Source: OECD calculations based on Urban Access Framework Database and International Transport Forum (2019), Benchmarking Accessibility in Cities


  1. Landlord-tenant regulations differ considerably across jurisdictions

OECD Tenure Security Index, 2021

Note: The indicator measures whether rental market regulation is more (high value) protective of tenants or more (low value) favourable to landlords. The degree of tenant security is assessed through the capacity of landlords to easily evict tenants without passing through jurisdiction court (sub-item 1), through the freedom of the landlord to define the terms of the rental contracts (eviction notice and duration of contracts) (sub-item 2) and through the possibility for the landlord to set freely the amount of deposit requirement (sub-item 3).

Source: OECD (2021), Brick by Brick: Building Better Housing Policies