【英文】国际住房负担能力报告2023年版（26页）

The pandemic created a demand shock that led to rapid and unprecedented deterioration in  housing affordability. According to Sam Khater, chief economist at the US Federal Home Loan  Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) characterized “the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic” as  “unusual in that it spurred housing demand because higher-income households who were able to  work from home wanted more space and were willing to live farther from their offices.” However, house affordability has generally stabilized recently, though at higher levels than before  the pandemic. In some markets there has been improvement. 

This is the type of market behavior  that is expected when a demand shock passes. Economists have found that house prices in more  highly regulated housing markets tend to be more volatile,10 and the largest house price declines  have been in the most highly regulated markets.  In a well-functioning market, the median priced  houses should be affordable to middle-income  households, as they were in virtually all markets before the inception of more restrictive  land use policies, especially urban containment. Only a few markets had adopted such  policies by the 1970s, with many more to  follow (see Appendix: Urban Containment). As  late as about 1990 national price-to-income ratios were “affordable,” at 3.0 or less in Australia,  Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United  Kingdom and the United States (Figure 2).