Housing regime’ is a term that is used relatively often in (macrosocial) research comparing housing policies and systems. However, there is no generally accepted definition of this term. In this paper I shall first scrutinise previous uses of the concept, starting with a discussion of the most famous regime concept – the welfare regime. The discussion paves the way for a redefinition of a ‘housing regime’: the set of fundamental principles according to which housing provision operates in some defined area (municipality, region, state) at a particular point in time. Such principles are thought to be embodied in the institutional arrangements that relate to housing provision, in the political interventions that address housing issues, and as in the discourses through which housing issues are customarily understood. This definition is compatible with the path-dependence approach that has been adopted here and with the aspects of reality that researchers want to capture using the ‘regime’ concept.
The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of path dependence theory to explain the convergence of housing regimes among post-socialist countries, both at the beginning and in the later phases of housing-regime transformation. We especially seek to show the selected common traps that were recently created by the legacy of giveaway privatisation and the super-homeownership regime, traps that increase intergenerational inequality, which to now has been effectively mitigated by within-family financial transfers.