An entrenched housing crisis was one of the dominant themes in last week’s Dutch election, and it is not hard to understand why. House prices in the Netherlands have doubled in the past decade, and a new-build home costs 16 times the average salary. Across the EU, affordability is not just a life-limiting problem in notoriously expensive property markets such as Lisbon, Madrid or Dublin. Speculative investment and a chronic supply shortage have also led to soaring prices in emerging areas where bigger, faster returns are attainable.
Belatedly, this pan-European pattern is to be addressed by a Europe-wide response. Socialist MEPs made action on housing a condition of their continued support for the two-term European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. Next month, Brussels will publish its first affordable housing plan, which will target the destructive growth of the Airbnb-style rental market and aim to make it easier for governments to subsidise the building of new homes.
