East European Regional   

30

Housing Sector Assistance Project   

!

No data on household wealth exist.

!

No mortgage credit data are yet published by the National Bank of Poland

(NBP).

Thus, as noted in annex II, the available data for macroeconomic analysis are

seriously hampered by the lack of consistent historical time series and by limitations on

overall accuracy and representativeness.  Macroeconomic housing investment data and

data on new dwellings are thought to be extremely unreliable.  Data on general financial

conditions are available, but there are no detailed data on mortgage credits.  Finally, due

to changes in classification methods, economic data on existing and newly constructed

housing stock are not easy to track in recent years, including, for example, suitably

detailed studies on the depreciation of the housing stock.  As discussed in section 5.0,

GUS is aware of many of these criticisms and is undertaking to bring its estimation and

accounting procedures more in line with international procedures.

Limitations on Poland's Microeconomic Data for Households, Housing, and

Finance

Various institutions in Poland collect microeconomic data on households, housing

characteristics, housing allowances, and rents.  These include the Micro Census,

conducted by GUS in 1995; the Census itself, which will take place again in 2002; the

Housing and Building Analysis, which presents housing data at the level of the voivodship

(the latest was 1996); and the important housing monitoring data regularly collected by the

Housing Research Institute.  These data provide much descriptive information about

various aspects of the housing stock.  For two major reasons, however, the data are not

suitable for estimation of the microeconomic demand functions that lie at the heart of the

analysis questions we wish to address.

First, the annex provides a critique regarding the suitability of some of these data

and notes that the determination of effective demand for housing using microeconomic

data is impeded by a range of factors, both historic and present. Most glaring is the

inadequacy in reporting of household income suitable for assessing housing and credit

demand. Until 1992, when the personal income tax system was introduced, household

income was measured through a household income survey methodology (described in the

annex).  This may be desegregated only to the microregional level for five socioeconomic

groupings.  Also, while some demographic and housing characteristic data useful for

housing stock analysis exist, data on tenure and duration of stay and more detailed

information on housing units and locational characteristics are not available.  The lack of

historic and current data on housing costs and prices and distortions in the market through

nontransparent subsidies, both historic and present, limits stock valuation. And, as noted,

there are no data on mortgage credit.