🇪🇺 Europe·Owner-occupancy·Eurostat ilc_lvho02 · 2024-2025
Am I a rare homeowner in Europe?
Pick your country and tell us if you own or rent. We'll show you exactly how rare you are across 30 European countries.
I my home in .
In Switzerland · renters
1 in1.7
About half and half
Roughly as common as the opposite tenure.
58.0% of households in Switzerland rent their home. The other 42.0% own.
Four Europes, four stories
Owner-occupancy by region.
The split is not random. Central and Eastern Europe inherited near-universal ownership from the 1990s privatisations. The Nordics and Western Europe sit closer to the EU average. Southern Europe leans owner-heavy too. The DACH minority pulls the West down.
Central & Eastern Europe
85.4%
average ownership across 11 countries
Southern Europe
71.4%
average ownership across 6 countries
Nordics
68.1%
average ownership across 4 countries
Western Europeyour region
59.9%
average ownership across 9 countries
The full ranking · 30 European countries
Each bar is one country's tenure split.
The left side of every bar is owners; the right side is renters. The line at 68.4% is the EU-27 average. Your country is highlighted, with a marker on the side that matches you.
01
🇷🇴Romania
93.2%
02
🇸🇰Slovakia
93.1%
03
🇭🇷Croatia
91.4%
04
🇭🇺Hungary
89.8%
05
🇱🇹Lithuania
87.4%
06
🇵🇱Poland
87.2%
07
🇧🇬Bulgaria
86.1%
08
🇱🇻Latvia
82.2%
09
🇳🇴Norway
80.0%
10
🇪🇪Estonia
79.7%
11
🇮🇹Italy
77.1%
12
🇨🇿Czechia
75.1%
13
🇸🇮Slovenia
74.2%
14
🇪🇸Spain
73.6%
15
🇵🇹Portugal
71.2%
16
🇧🇪Belgium
70.9%
17
🇬🇷Greece
69.4%
18
🇮🇪Ireland
69.3%
19
🇨🇾Cyprus
69.2%
20
🇳🇱Netherlands
68.8%
21
🇲🇹Malta
68.1%
22
🇫🇮Finland
66.9%
23
🇸🇪Sweden
64.6%
24
🇱🇺Luxembourg
63.5%
25
🇬🇧United Kingdom
61.7%
26
🇫🇷France
61.2%
27
🇩🇰Denmark
60.9%
28
🇦🇹Austria
54.5%
29
🇩🇪Germany
47.2%
30
🇨🇭Switzerland
42.0%
Owners Renters EU average 68.4%
Three patterns worth the asterisk
What the league table hides.
The DACH minority
The three German-speaking economies have Europe's lowest homeownership.
Switzerland at 42.0% and Germany at 47.2% are the only two countries in this set where more households rent than own. Austria, the third-lowest at 54.5%, still has an owner majority. All three pair high incomes with deeply rooted tenant-friendly rental markets, strict mortgage standards, and a culture where renting carries no stigma.
The post-1990 inheritance
Eight of the ten highest ownership rates are in formerly socialist countries.
Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria and Latvia all sit above 82%. Mass privatisation of state-owned housing in the early 1990s transferred apartment stock to sitting tenants at symbolic prices. Three decades later, the cohort still owns.
Renting is not poverty
The EU-27 average is 68.4%, slightly above the United States.
The EU sits a few points above the US (around 65 to 66%). But the EU average hides enormous variation, from 42% in Switzerland to 93% in Romania. The US distribution across states is far more uniform than Europe's distribution across countries.
A house is a big slice of net worth.
In Europe, real estate is the dominant asset for most owning households. See how your net worth stacks up globally on the wealth pyramid.
→
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Next steps
Four calculators sized to the same question.
House affordability
How much you can buy at your income and current mortgage rates.
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Saving rate, ranked
How much of your take-home pay you keep, versus other economies.
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Cost-of-living index
How far a salary stretches across countries, anchored to a global benchmark.
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Frequently asked questions
Romania leads Europe with 93.2% of households living in owner-occupied homes, followed by Slovakia (93.1%) and Croatia (91.4%). The mass privatization of state-owned apartments in the early 1990s left most residents of Central and Eastern Europe as homeowners.
Switzerland has the lowest rate in Europe — only 42.0% of households own the home they live in. Germany follows at 47.2%, then Austria at 54.5%. These three German-speaking economies (the DACH region) combine high incomes with deeply rooted, tenant-friendly rental markets.
Several factors compound: high property prices relative to income, strict mortgage lending standards (often a 20% down payment minimum in Switzerland), powerful tenant-protection laws that make long-term renting safe, and a cultural norm where renting carries no stigma. In Switzerland, mandatory imputed rent taxation also dampens the financial pull toward ownership.
Not at all. In countries like Germany, Switzerland, France, Denmark and the United Kingdom, between 38% and 58% of households rent — including high earners. What matters more is whether you build wealth in other ways: through pension contributions, investments, or retained savings that owners typically tie up in property.
All EU and EFTA figures come from Eurostat's ilc_lvho02 indicator (Distribution of population by tenure status), using the most recent year published — either 2024 or 2025. The United Kingdom value comes from the UK Parliament House of Commons Library briefing CBP-10567. Each figure is the share of households whose dwelling is owner-occupied, with or without a mortgage.
The EU-27 average is 68.4% — slightly below the United States at around 65-66%. But the EU average hides enormous variation: from 42% in Switzerland to 93% in Romania. The U.S. distribution is far more uniform across states than Europe's distribution is across countries.