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The 10 EU Countries Where the Most People Own Their Home |
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Eurostat’s latest housing survey covers 2025. For the first time since 2007, Romania is not No. 1. Slovakia is, at 93.8%. Nine of the top ten were communist states in 1989. Germany, the EU’s biggest economy, comes last. |
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Source: Eurostat, EU-SILC table ilc_lvho02, updated 17 September 2026. Share of people living in an owner-occupied home, 2025. |
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| What's Surprising |
Slovakia now leads at 93.8%. Romania had topped this table every year since it joined the survey in 2007. Its share has slipped from 97.6% in 2010 to 93.2%. The gap is 0.6 points. Next year it could flip back.
Wealth does not predict this list. History does. In the 1990s, governments across the former Eastern bloc sold state flats to the tenants living in them, sometimes for as little as 15% of market price. Romania’s state owned about a third of all homes before 1990. By 1999, 94.6% were private.
Ownership here rarely means a mortgage. Just 1.1% of Romanians live in a home with a loan on it. In the Netherlands: 57.9%.
| What's Not Surprising |
Owning a home is not the same as having room. Romania has the EU’s highest overcrowding rate: 40.4% of people live in a home with too few rooms. The EU average is 16.8%. Nine of the top ten owner countries sit above that average. Hungary is the exception.
Germany is last at 47.2%, down from 53.2% in 2010. The Bundesbank points to policy: high property-transfer taxes, no tax deduction for mortgage interest, and a broad social-housing sector. Renting is the sensible default.
Money alone does not decide it. Norway, outside the EU, makes $105,877 a head to Germany’s $65,303, by IMF estimates. Norway’s ownership rate: 80.0%. Germany’s: 47.2%.
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93.8% Slovaks living in a home their household owns. The first country other than Romania to lead the EU since 2007. |
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1.1% Romanians living in a home with a mortgage. In the Netherlands, it is 57.9%. |
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40.4% Romanians living in an overcrowded home, the highest rate in the EU. Ownership and space are not the same thing. |
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9 of 10 Countries in today’s top ten that were communist states in 1989. Italy is the only exception. |
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6.0 points Germany’s fall since 2010, from 53.2% to 47.2%. Fewer than half of Germans now live in an owned home. |
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The US Census Bureau updates its homeownership rate on 28 October. It stood at 65.0% of households in the second quarter, a different measure from Eurostat’s share of people. Eurostat’s 2026 results arrive country by country through 2027. Two things to track: whether Romania takes back first place, and whether Germany slips further below half. We’ll be watching. |
