Housing affordability in Russia and foreign countries

The article presents the analysis of the dynamics of housing affordability indicators in Russia over the past 10 years and in largest urban agglomerations during 2010-2016. It highlights the main factors that influenced the growth in housing affordability in this period. This paper compares Russian indicators with similar foreign indicators, taking into account the methodological differences. The authors show that there was a trend to increase housing affordability in Russia for the past period through home purchase using mortgage loans. In contrast to Russia, in the majority of developed countries more attention was paid to improving the quality of the urban environment in the same period, which led to a certain decrease in housing affordability.