Assessing the Regional Housing Market Development in the Northern and Arctic Regions of the Russian Federation

The purpose of the study is a comprehensive assessment of housing market development based on a new system of indicators reflecting the population's solvency and demand in the housing market, the economic development of the housing market, in order to identify trends in the housing market over a long period and reveal key problems hindering the housing market development in the Northern and Arctic regions of Russia. In this paper we propose a methodology to assess the regional housing markets, analyze the indicators of economic development in the North and the Arctic, estimate people's financial capacity and demand in the housing market, indicate major changes in the regions' housing sector that can occur on the background of the measures applied by the state due to the coronavirus pandemic. The scientific novelty of the work is determined by a comprehensive study of regional housing markets in the Northern and Arctic regions using the indices proposed by the authors, which made it possible to formulate a number of proposals for developing the housing market in the Arctic and Northern regions of the Russian Federation. The study results can be used by the government and administrative authorities in developing policies in the field of providing the population with comfortable housing and improving the regions' housing stock, in working out the programs aimed at housing construction, as well as by specialists in the field of finance, researchers. In the future, based on a comparative analysis of the regions' housing development, the authors plan to predict the regional housing markets development taking into account the changing parameters of population solvency and construction industry, considering the specifics of the Federation subject's development and the effectiveness of government measures in this sector of the economy during the crisis period of the pandemic.