Household energy constitutes an important share of affordable housing. Unaffordable housing and inadequate household energy represent a new dimension of poverty. Connections between energy, housing affordability and well-being are still under-researched. Building on housing affordability framework, this study explores the magnitude in changes in affordability of acquisition and use of an apartment between January 2018 and January 2022. Over the last four years, the real estate market in Europe has changed significantly. This paper deals with primary data for the Czech Republic, where acquisition prices of residential real estate increased depending on the region in the range of 50 to 120%. Since January 2022, there has been a sharp rise in energy prices and a tightening of conditions for the acquisition of mortgage loans. All these factors affect the standard of living in the Czech Republic. The article quantifies the magnitude of this change by calculating shares of total housing costs to total average net household income for the period January 2018 and January 2022. It is found that the affordability of owner-occupied housing in the Czech Republic has deteriorated and part of the middle class will be forced to move to the rental housing sector, multifamily housing and sharing. Finally, we argue that energy poverty needs to be considered in addressing the government housing policies. The aim of the article is to analyze the changes that have taken place in the real estate market over the last four years in relation to the growth of total housing costs and energy costs associated with housing.

The paper deals with the issue of unavailability housing in the Czech Republic, which affects an increasing number of people. As a result of the covid-19 pandemic, there has been a significant increase in property prices and widening the price to income gap, which mainly affects young people. This paper describes the basic causes of this undesirable phenomenon in society and provides recommendations that should be quickly adopted by the state and municipalities to improve the situation as we see a risk of an increase in social tension in society and a deterioration in the availability of employment for low-income professions.

The article compares the effects of crisis on the real estate market in two regions of the Czech Republic that differ from a macroeconomic point of view. The region of Prague represents the rich and developed region while the Karlovy Vary region struggles with many socio-economic and structural problems. An analysis was performed for the time period of 2018 to 2022. It analyzed the development of apartment prices in both regions, the availability of housing, the turnover of the real estate market in terms of the number of apartment sales, the development of liens on real estate, the number of apartment transfers from state property to private ownership, and the development of the number of real estate foreclosures. The basis for creating statistical outputs is the EVAL software, which was developed by one of the co-authors of this article. The EVAL software collects price offers of apartments offered for sale and rent throughout the Czech Republic and collects publicly available data from the cadastral office. The authors found that the real estate market experienced a significant turnaround in the volume of mortgage loans granted in 2022. This decline led to a significant drop in the total volume of real estate transactions. The findings suggest that potential buyers should wait for property prices to drop before buying, while rental property owners and investors can take advantage of the increased demand for properties.

Within a broad discussion on property price formation and property market specifics this paper aims to investigate the relationship between property price trends and number of transactions occurred on housing market. Specifically, we test if housing transaction volumes and rents are good predictors of housing prices and discuss causalities and differences in this relationship on the sales and rental property markets. We bring evidence from selected European property markets about the relationship between property price trend and number of transactions occurring on this market. We argue that increased number of transactions is predictive of increase in property price, but prices tend to be rigid in the opposite (downward) direction. Thus, cooling down of demand for properties may rather decrease number of transactions than push down property prices. This appealing result may bring light into understanding why property prices appreciate across time and countries.

The article focuses on highlighting the role of life cycle costing (LCC) in the preparatory and implementation phase of residential projects. It involves the evaluation of several investment scenarios in the pre-investment phase, the choice between variants of the design of the entire building or its parts, and the choice of variants of structures and equipment with acceptable parameters. An innovative method of evaluating the life cycle of buildings is described in the article. This method was tested in selected residential projects realized by Skanska in the Czech Republic. Experience from construction practice shows that the choice of variants, constructions, or equipment of buildings only on the basis of the lowest acquisition costs (lowest bid prices) is wrong. The LCC calculation tool has been designed to model life cycle costs of individual variants of construction designs with different input parameters. It is possible to analyze the components or equipment that have the greatest impact on total life cycle costs. The article presents a tool that evaluates the long-term economic efficiency of the proposed residential buildings in terms of analysis of life cycle costs. The article will also expand the knowledge of the professional and general public about the importance of examining investment and operating costs already in the phase of construction preparation.

The paper describes an innovative software that is used for real estate evaluation and mapping and analyzing of real estate advertisements published on the internet in the Czech Republic. The software systematically collects, analyzes and assesses data about the changes in the real estate market. For each half year, the software assembles over 650,000 price quotations concerning sale or rental of apartments, houses, business properties and building lots. All real estate advertisements are continuously stored in a software database and are thoroughly analyzed for their credibility. There have been numerous articles concerning real estate market analysis in both mass media and scholarly publications. Unfortunately, not all presented information is objective and unbiased. Many cases by “independent specialists” have stated information with no verified research. We have witnessed manipulation of information by lobbies (such as banks offering mortgage agents, real estate companies and agents, building companies, developers, majority owners, etc.). The author of this paper offers objective and unbiased evaluation of price development in real estate market. The author brings forward information based on extensive research and large amounts of statistical data which has been collected continuously from year 2007 until today.