How wide is the gap? A Panel Data Analysis of the Housing Satisfaction between Owners and Renters across the EU

Housing Policies and the supply and demand for housing largely differs across the EU. Such marked differences may end up to large discrepancies in the quality of the housing stock in both the property and the rental housing market of each country. In this sense, the rental residential market is probably the one that might better pick up these differentials. In those countries where the tenure imbalance is high enough in favour of homeownership we could expect large differences in terms of the quality of the supplied housing stock. However, in more mature housing markets where the tenure status is more balanced, property and rental markets compete to attract the demand. Hence, it should be expected that due to this competition the quality of the housing stock raises in countries with higher tenure imbalance, where minimum standards of quality, especially in the rental market, can only be achieved by paying more. In this paper we aim to analyse these differentials across the EU. To do so we use the ECHP to determine the socioeconomic determinants of the level of housing satisfaction. From this analysis we observe that the levels of housing satisfaction and its determinants varies significantly between owners and renters across the EUcountries.