The housing cost in Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Germany and other EU members; an excessive burden 

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Housing costs – an excessive burden for 11 % of Europeans

Costs relating to housing are the main items of expenditure for many European households. In the European context, these expenses include rental or mortgage interest payments but also the cost of utilities such as water, electricity, gas or heating. Such costs are considered as an excessive burden when they represent more than 40 % of equivalised disposable income.

In 2015, 11.3 % of the EU population lived in households which spent 40 % or more of their disposable income on housing. There are significant differences between the EU Member States. At one extreme there are a number of countries where a relatively small proportion of the population live in households where housing costs exceeded 40 % of their disposable income, notably Malta (1.1 %), Cyprus (3.9 %), Ireland (4.6 %) and Finland (4.9 %). At the other extreme, 40.9 % of people in Greece and just below one in six of the population in Romania (15.9 %), Germany (15.6 %) and Denmark (15.1 %) spent more than 40 % of their disposable income on housing.

eu housing cost

Main statistical findings

Type of dwelling

In 2015, more than 4 out of every 10 persons (42.0 %) in the EU-28 lived in flats, close to one quarter (24.1 %) in semi-detached houses and one third (33.3 %) in detached houses (see Figure 1). The proportion of people living in flats was highest, among the EU Member States, in Spain (65.9 %), Latvia (65.0 %) and Estonia (62.6 %), while the highest proportions of people living in semi-detached houses were reported in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (both 59.9 %) and Ireland (51.6 %); these were the only Member States where more than half of the population lived in a semi-detached house. The share of people living in detached houses peaked in Croatia (73.4 %), Slovenia (65.1 %), Hungary (62.1 %) and Romania (60.1 %); Serbia (66.1 %) and Norway (61.2 %) also reported that more than 6 out of every 10 persons in of their population were living in detached houses.

eu housing type

Figure 1

Tenure status

In 2015, over one quarter (26.9 %) of the EU-28 population lived in an owner-occupied home for which there was an outstanding loan or mortgage, while more than two fifths (42.5 %) of the population lived in an owner-occupied home without a loan or mortgage. As such, 7 out of every 10 (69.4 %) persons in the EU-28 lived in owner-occupied dwellings, while 19.7 % were tenants with a market price rent, and 10.9 % were tenants in reduced-rent or free accommodation.

More than half of the population in each EU Member State (see Figure 2) lived in owner-occupied dwellings in 2015, ranging from 51.8 % in Germany up to 96.5 % in Romania. As such, none of the EU Member States recorded a share of tenants that was higher than the share of people living in owner-occupied dwellings. By contrast, in Switzerland (2014 data), the proportion of people who lived in rented dwellings outweighed those living in owner-occupied dwellings, as some 55.5 % of the population were tenants. In Sweden (63.4 %) and the Netherlands (60.1 %) more than half of the population lived in owner-occupied dwellings with an outstanding loan or mortgage; this was also the case in Iceland (62.8 %) and Norway (61.9 %).

The share of people living in rented dwellings with a market price rent in 2015 was less than 10.0 % in 11 of the EU Member States. By contrast, close to two fifths of the population in Germany (39.9 %) and Denmark (37.3 %) lived in rented dwellings with a market price rent as did close to three tenths of the population in the Netherlands (31.7 %), Austria (29.6 %) and Sweden (29.1 %), and just over one fifth in Luxembourg (21.7 %). The share of the population that lived in rented dwellings with a market price rent was even higher in Switzerland where it reached 49.2 % (2014 data). The share of the population living in a dwelling with a reduced price rent or occupying a dwelling free of charge was less than 20.0 % in all of the EU Member States and the six non-member countries for which data are shown.

eu tenure status

Figure 2

Housing quality

One of the key dimensions in assessing the quality of housing is the availability of sufficient space in a dwelling. The overcrowding rate describes the proportion of people living in an overcrowded dwelling, as defined by the number of rooms available to the household, the household’s size, as well as its members’ ages and their family situation.

In 2015, 16.7 % of the EU-28 population lived in overcrowded dwellings. The highest overcrowding rates among the EU Member States were registered in Romania (49.7 %) and Poland (43.4 %), while rates above 50 % were recorded for Serbia (53.4 %) and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (51.1 %), with Turkey (45.9 %, 2013 data) also recording a relatively high overcrowding rate. By contrast, Cyprus (1.4 %), Belgium (1.6 %), the Netherlands (3.3 %), Ireland (3.4 %) and Malta (3.5 %) recorded the lowest rates of overcrowding, while seven other EU Member States as well as Norway, Switzerland (2014 data) and Iceland all reported less than 10.0 % of their respective populations living in overcrowded dwellings.

There was no change in the share of the population living in overcrowded dwellings in the EU-28 between 2014 and 2015. The largest increase among the EU Member States was reported by Latvia, its share rising by 1.6 percentage points, while in Sweden, Greece and Italy the share also rose by more than 0.5 percentage points. By contrast, the overcrowding rate declined in 17 of the EU Member States. Reductions between 2014 and 2015 were larger than 1.0 percentage points in Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Lithuania. Within the population at risk of poverty (in other words, people living in households where equivalised disposable income per person was below 60 % of the national median), the overcrowding rate in the EU-28 was 29.5 % in 2015, some 12.8 percentage points above the rate for the whole population. The highest overcrowding rates among the population at risk of poverty were registered in Hungary (62.0 %), Romania (61.7 %), Poland (59.7 %) and Slovakia (57.6 %); Turkey (72.9 %, 2013 data), the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (68.1 %) and Serbia (63.6 %) also reported high overcrowding rates among their populations at risk of poverty. At the other end of the range, the lowest overcrowding rates for those at risk of poverty were recorded in Cyprus (3.5 %), Ireland (6.0 %), Belgium (6.5 %) and Malta (7.7 %); these were the only EU Member States to report that fewer than 1 in 10 persons at risk of poverty were living in overcrowded conditions.

In addition to overcrowding, some other aspects of housing deprivation — such as the lack of a bath or a toilet, a leaking roof in the dwelling, or a dwelling considered as being too dark — are taken into account to build a more complete indicator of housing quality. The severe housing deprivation rate is defined as the proportion of persons living in a dwelling which is considered as being overcrowded, while having at the same time at least one of these aforementioned housing deprivation measures.

Across the EU-28 as a whole, 4.9 % of the population suffered from severe housing deprivation in 2015. There were four EU Member States where more than 1 in 10 of the population faced severe housing deprivation in 2015: Bulgaria recorded a rate of 11.4 %, with this share rising to 15.5 % in both Hungary and Latvia and peaking at close to one in five persons (19.8 %) in Romania. By contrast, 1.0 % or less of the population in the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland and Cyprus faced severe housing deprivation in 2015.

The overall proportion of people within the EU-28 experiencing severe housing deprivation fell marginally between 2014 and 2015 (down by 0.1 percentage points). The largest increases between these years in the proportion of people experiencing severe housing deprivation were reported for Poland and Greece, both up 0.7 percentage points between 2014 and 2015. The largest decreases occurred in Hungary, Bulgaria, the Baltic Member States and Cyprus, where the severe housing deprivation rate fell by at least 1.0 percentage points.

Housing affordability

In 2015, an 11.3 % share of the EU-28 population lived in households that spent 40 % or more of their equivalised disposable income on housing. The proportion of the population whose housing costs exceeded 40 % of their equivalised disposable income was highest for tenants with market price rents (27.0 %) and lowest for persons in owner-occupied dwellings without a loan or mortgage (6.7 %).

The EU-28 average masks significant differences between the EU Member States: at one extreme there were a number of countries where a relatively small proportion of the population lived in households where housing costs exceeded 40 % of their disposable income, notably Malta (1.1 %), Cyprus (3.9 %), Ireland (4.6 %) and Finland (4.9 %). At the other extreme, just over two out of every five people (40.9 %) in Greece and just under one in six of the population in Romania (15.9 %), Germany (15.6 %) and Denmark (15.1 %) spent more than 40 % of their equivalised disposable income on housing.

Data sources and availability

The data used in this article are primarily derived from microdata from EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC). The reference population is all private households and their current members residing in the territory of an EU Member State at the time of data collection; persons living in collective households and in institutions are generally excluded from the target population. The EU-28 aggregate is a population-weighted average of individual national figures.

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Source: eurostat – Housing costs – an excessive burden for 11 % of Europeans

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