Housing Tenure Preferences among Students from Two Polish Universities

The housing rental market in Poland is underdeveloped and tilted towards temporary tenants, usually students and immigrants. To explore the flaws in the functioning of this market, we conduct a survey among 315 students from two Polish universities. We find that renting is not only perceived as a more expensive form of satisfying housing needs, but decreases satisfaction from utilizing the occupied house due to non-financial factors. Moreover, the perception of the relative advantages of owning versus renting is, to some extent, affected by flawed economic reasoning. Building on the above results, we discuss what policies could increase the demand for residential rental housing.