Monetary and macroprudential constraints on mortgage lending and their impact on housing affordability in the Russian Federation

Анотація

The article examines the impact of monetary, credit, and macroprudential constraints in mortgage lending on housing affordability in the Russian Federation over 2015–2024, incorporating assessment indicators as of November 1, 2025. Mortgage-based housing affordability is considered a key indicator of socio-economic resilience and of the realization of citizens’ constitutional right to housing. Using evidence for 2015–2024 and assessment data for 2025, the study analyzes the mortgage market’s shift from an accommodative monetary policy regime toward a configuration combining an elevated key policy rate, tighter macroprudential add-ons, and more granular regulatory requirements for borrowers. Housing affordability is interpreted as an integrated outcome of a set of regulatory eligibility filters, including the key policy rate and its transmission into mortgage rates; borrower-level requirements related to the debt burden indicator and down payment; caps on the share of higher-risk loans; and the program and legal parameters of state support. Program-related and banking constraints are treated as derivatives of monetary and macroprudential policy decisions formalized in the regulatory acts of the Bank of Russia and the Government of the Russian Federation. The methodological framework includes statistical analysis of interest rates, housing prices, and household incomes; regulatory and legal analysis of decisions adopted by the Bank of Russia and the Government; macroeconomic modeling of affordability metrics (payment burden, a payment-based affordability index, and an index of relative housing inaccessibility); and an author-developed “constraint ladder” model supplemented by a constraints matrix and a system of traffic-light threshold indicators. The results indicate that after 2022, amid tighter macroprudential add-ons and stricter regulation of the debt burden indicator, mortgages increasingly lose the characteristics of a mass-market product and evolve into a selective access mechanism for limited household groups, thereby strengthening differentiation by income level, regional conditions, and borrowers’ risk profiles. The practical contribution of the study is the development of an approach to assess how regulatory decisions affect housing affordability and the substantiation of directions for adjusting mortgage policy, taking into account debt-burden risks and the need to preserve the social function of mortgage lending.

Класифікація

Ідентифікатори

Схожі роботи