CTW Studio

Brief 003Housing & affordability

Is an ordinary life becoming less attainable?

Prices are visible. Attainability is a system: income, rent, financing, supply, tenure, place and time. This briefing keeps them separate long enough to see who the market is working for.

Data refreshed —World → Netherlands → comparisonsRead the method
  1. 01 Where now?
  2. 02 Which direction?
  3. 03 Who carries it?
  4. 04 Why?
  5. 05 What changes our mind?

01 Where are we now?

There is no single housing market—and no single affordability number.

Start at three scales. The world lens measures adequate shelter. The Dutch lens can ask about prices, incomes and tenure. Country comparisons show mechanisms, not winners.

World · housing adequacy—

of the urban population lived in slums in the latest global observation.

Derived scale—

people, approximately—not a direct census. The calculation applies the slum share to world urban population in the same year.

Boundary: this tells us about housing adequacy, not whether formal homes are affordable. No timely global series joins price, rent, income, financing and informal housing.

Source: World Bank / UN-Habitat, world urban slum share, 2022 ↗ · Scope & caveats ↓

Existing homes · latest y/y——
Average transaction—Mix-sensitive; not the quality-adjusted index
Price-to-income—2015=100 · OECD
Housing-cost overburden—Total population · Eurostat

Read: price growth has resumed, and the income-adjusted index remains far above 2015. The national overburden average hides an extreme tenure split.

Sources: CBS prices ↗, OECD indices ↗, Eurostat overburden ↗ · Scope & caveats ↓

Harmonized comparison

Price-to-income change since 2015

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Not an absolute affordability ranking. Each country equals 100 in 2015. The bars show how its own price-to-income relationship changed—not how many years of income a home costs.

Source: OECD, analytical house-price indicators, 2015=100 ↗ · Scope & caveats ↓

02 What direction are we moving?

Homes outran both incomes and rents. Cheaper money amplified the climb.

Four OECD indices share the same 2015 base. They reveal why a price dip can coexist with poor affordability—and why nominal price headlines are not enough.

Netherlands · OECD · quarterly

Prices, rents and affordability

Dutch housing indices since 2010House prices, rents, price-to-income and price-to-rent indices, where 2015 equals 100.
All lines are indices, not euro prices. A value of 135 means 35% above that series’ 2015 relationship.
View the chart as data

Source: OECD, Dutch house-price, rent and affordability indices, quarterly ↗ · Scope & caveats ↓

The common mistake

“Prices fell, so homes became affordable.”

A buyer experiences the monthly payment, required equity, taxes and competing household costs. If mortgage rates rise faster than prices fall, purchasing power can worsen.

Netherlands · CBS · annual alignment

Did dwelling supply outpace household formation?

2018–2024
Household growth compares 1 January with the following 1 January. National totals do not reveal location, price, suitability, vacancy or accumulated backlog.
View the chart as data

Sources: CBS housing stock ↗ + private households ↗, 2018–2024 · Scope & caveats ↓

03 Who is benefiting—or carrying the cost?

The average hides the housing divide.

Eurostat’s housing-cost overburden threshold is the same across tenure groups: more than 40% of disposable household income. The outcomes are not remotely the same.

Netherlands · Eurostat

Overburden by tenure

—
Housing allowances are reflected in disposable income and housing costs under EU-SILC conventions.

Source: Eurostat, housing-cost overburden by tenure ↗ · Scope & caveats ↓

Population by tenure

A protected rental sector does not eliminate a market-renter crisis.

Owners
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Market rent
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Reduced / free rent
—

These are population shares, not shares of the dwelling stock. “Reduced rent” includes social, subsidised and other below-market arrangements.

Source: Eurostat, population by tenure ↗ · Scope & caveats ↓

What the distribution says

The primary split is not simply young versus old or rich versus poor. It is also between people whose housing cost is partly fixed or asset-backed and people repriced by a scarce market.

04 What are the competing explanations?

“Build more” is directionally useful—and analytically incomplete.

Supply matters. So do credit, household formation, location, tenure, tax, regulation and the inherited stock. The evidence is strongest when explanations compete rather than take turns as slogans.

05 What evidence would change our conclusion?

A useful dashboard must make itself falsifiable.

Our current conclusion is not “housing only gets worse.” These are the observations that would justify a more optimistic reading.

    Current conclusion · July 2026

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    → What might this make possible?

    Pressure reveals capabilities society is missing.

    Explicitly labelled hypotheses—not investment advice, forecasts or optimism pasted over bad news.

    Method Sources & boundaries

    Every number keeps its denominator.

    01

    Three lenses

    World housing adequacy, Dutch and European affordability, then selected countries chosen for mechanisms rather than rank.

    02

    Same-base comparisons

    OECD index values show change from 2015. They do not show absolute price levels or years of income needed.

    03

    Aligned supply

    Annual dwelling-stock change is compared with private-household growth over the matching January-to-January interval.

    04

    Baked, reviewable data

    Official observations are refreshed by script, inspected and committed. Visitors do not call upstream APIs.

    Read the refresh and derivation notes

    World estimate. The affected-population figure is derived from two World Bank series for the same year. It is approximate and is not a direct census.

    Purchase price. CBS’s average transaction price changes with the mix of homes sold. The quality-adjusted index is the correct trend measure.

    Overburden. EU-SILC is survey-based. Tenure groups can differ in income, age, geography and dwelling quality; the chart describes the distribution but does not identify one causal mechanism.

    Refresh. Run python3 signals/scripts/update_housing_data.py from ctw.studio, then inspect periods, revisions, definitions and this narrative before publishing.

    Evidence ledger

    Official and institution-grade sources

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    Signals atlasExplore the ten subjects →Seven subjects with published coverage · three planned