Real Estate: Eurostat: Romania remains the country with the highest percentage of homeowners in the EU
In 2020, 70% of the population in the EU lived in a household owning their home, while the remaining 30% lived in rented housing.
The highest shares of ownership were observed in Romania, where 96% of the population lived in a household that owned their home, followed by Slovakia (92%), Hungary and Croatia (both 91%).
In all Member States, except for Germany, owning is most common. In Germany’s case, half of the population lived in a household owning their home and the other half in a rented home. The shares of homeownership were lowest also in Austria (55%) and Denmark (59%).
Eurostat data also show that, at EU level, 53% of the population lives in a house and 46% in an apartment, while the remaining 1% live in another type of space such as a house on rivers, caravans, etc. Ireland with 92% is the country with the highest percentage of people living in a house, on the other hand being Spain where 66% of people live in an apartment.
In Romania, 65.9% of the inhabitants live at home and 34.1% live in an apartment. But Romania ranks last in the EU when it comes to housing size, measured by the average number of rooms per person. While in the EU the average is 1.6 rooms for one person, in Romania it is 1.1 rooms for one person. The best in this respect are Malta with 2.3 rooms per person, followed by Belgium and Ireland, both with 2.1 rooms per person.
Also, when it comes to the quality of housing, which can be measured in several ways including the percentage of the population living in a crowded home, Romania is the country with the highest congestion rate (45.1%), while At EU level, less than 18% of the population lived in a crowded home in 2020, down from 19.1% in 2010.