The housing stock and who owns it

An unusually high proportion of Ukrainians own the home they live in, outright and without a mortgage. This is not a sign of prosperity; it is the direct result of how the stock was transferred.

What happened

In the 1990s, state apartments were privatised to their occupants, essentially free. A family living in a flat received the flat.

That produced instant mass ownership and a set of consequences that are still being worked through.

The consequences

Owners with no capital. A household that owns an apartment worth a substantial sum but has a modest income cannot maintain the building, and the building is shared.

A collective action problem in every block. Common areas, roofs, pipes and lifts belong to everyone and therefore to nobody. Repair requires agreement among dozens of owners with different incomes and different views on whether the roof is urgent.

A thin rental market. Where nearly everyone owns, there is little formal rental supply, and what exists is largely informal and undocumented.

Why this matters now

Displacement requires rental housing, and the market that would supply it barely exists. That is the binding constraint in receiving cities described elsewhere in this record.

And reconstruction inherits the ownership structure: compensating and rebuilding privately owned apartments in shared buildings is legally far harder than rebuilding state-owned stock would be.

What would help

Functioning building associations with the legal power to raise money and undertake work. A formal, taxed, contract-based rental sector. And purpose-built social and municipal rental housing, which Ukraine essentially does not have and reconstruction is a rare opportunity to create.

Everyone owning and the market staying weak are two faces of one cause: property handed out for nothing never became a saleable asset. I see the consequence on the construction side — because the second-hand market never deepened, demand for new housing stays narrow. What would help is not a subsidy but the title, valuation and mortgage chain working.