**3. Housing affordability**

The harmony between housing (the real estate market) and working opportunities (the labour market) became an essential part of public policy of the state and self-government. There are several reasons why the availability of housing is still related to the availability of working opportunities:


As Cervero [4] presents, the response to this discrepancy might be so-called the job and housing balance policy. He proceeds from a general condition that the ratio between work opportunities and flats leads to a higher efficacy, equality, quality of life and environmental sustainability. However, the measures of housing and work balance policy do not have apparently a housing character but vice versa; they function in cooperation with other policies, especially of social protection, labour market and transport policy.

According to Krcmar and Rychtarik [5], the analysis of housing affordability in Slovakia can be done on the background of economic and financial cycle. Even if the time series for Slovakia is too short, the available data do suggest a positive correlation between the changes in the real GDP and the flow of loans. On this background housing affordability appears to move against the cycle. In the booming times of 2007 until the first half of 2008, when the GDP growth as well as the lending market reached its historical maxima, average housing became unaffordable for average families. This can be explained by soaring property prices that outperformed growing disposable incomes of households. As the growth of income levels could not keep the pace of the one of the housing market, the lending activity accelerated even more to counterbalance the lack of savings generally needed for house purchases. A different situation is observed after 2010, when a combination of stable development on property market and the modest growth of disposable income, accompanied by falling interest rates, led to constant improvements in the affordability of housing [5].
