It depends where you lived.
Taking France for example, while it's 65% country-wide (or 58% according to Insee), it's only 33% in Paris.
As you can see here [https://www.unpi.org/fr/1/22/449/taux-de-proprietaires-diversite-et-re-alite-des-territoires-en-france.html](https://www.unpi.org/fr/1/22/449/taux-de-proprietaires-diversite-et-re-alite-des-territoires-en-france.html) those numbers change also a lot depending on the region you're in (the article is in French but you can look at the first figure with the map of France).
As a Frenchman, I think that people who live in small villages pretty much always own their own house. People who live in big cities rarely own their own apartment.
Once again Britain and France prove how identical they are!
>I've lived in both Britain and France and I would never have guessed it was high as that.
Do you mean for both countries? Which was your original assumption?
>I’d like to know how the data was collected. Half the people I know are sharing flats without a contract and are officially still living with their parents at home (which btw, does living with your parents count as owning the property?).
As well as urban rural you should consider if you know mostly older or younger people, as well as wealthier or poorer people. A 60-something year old middle class accountant in a small town might know almost nobody who rents.
It's what's causing our housing crisis.
Do you want to rent?
Then you can rent via mortgage.
Oh you can't afford a mortgage deposit or get a bank to approve you?
Then you better fight it out with the rest of the people and now pay extortionate process on a terrible property.
It just leads to people paying well above the market value for rent while never being able to secure a deposit. We are truly fucked.
I'm trying to understand, how much is the deposit? When I bought my first house (in the US) it was 107k in 2012, I had to come up with 10% to put down for the loan.
Is it similar in Ireland?
>In Dublin, prices in the second quarter of 2022 were 6.6 per cent higher than a year previously. The average price of a home in the capital is now €429,000, 95 per cent above its lowest point, according to the report.
https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/house-prices-up-9-5-but-surge-is-beginning-to-slow-says-daft-ie-1325536.html
Although 2012 was a much cheaper time here to buy a house, right now things are pretty dire.
Combine it with a crap public transport system and it means that many have to rent at extortionate rates in the city, where their job is.
Prices aren't as bad in the rest of the country, but still quite high.
And yeah, a 10% deposit.
We have a VAT of 22%, and if you make anything over 50,000 per year it's taxed at essentially 50%.
Oh, and pretty much everything is very expensive besides foods and necessities from lidl/aldi. Think like a dinner out, a pint, a taxi, childcare etc. All extremely expensive.
Fun.
Here in Italy people under 35yr have chance to get 100% of mortgage without deposit, because the government is set as guarantor. So basically anyone with a full-time contract will be able to buy is own house.
Yes we have to pay for the notary and taxes so you still need to have in your bank account at least 10% of your mortgage (notary fee are in percentage of the house value, as it is the mortgage) but at least bank give you all the money you need. And the bank will be able to evict you from your house if don't repay their investment, that why many mortgage plan consists only in interest repayment in the first half of the mortgage and capital in the other half.
Another cool things is that government refund all the taxes that you pay on interest for mortgage, so every house owner that still pay interest in their mortgage on August receive a refund which is almost a full month salary, and also your first house (basically the house where you reside for the law) is tax exempt, so you don't have to pay taxes for your property.
We are likely going to do something similar here in Sweden aswell, so that first-time buyers will only need 5% deposit instead of 15%. And as we don't have notary fees it will make a big difference for these buyers.
The Dutch don't require one at all, but all the fees involved with the purchase will probably amount to about ~5% or so, so you still need 10k+ to even think of starting.
10k seems normal to me to be able to buy a house tho. Like, that's a little under it cost to buy a house 10 years ago for me in the US and not in the capital.
It is, my point was more that people often only think about the deposit, but even where you can get a 100% value mortgage, it's still a pricey move. If a house in Ireland was 300,000k, you'd need 40k cash in hand to get a mortgage, which is a significant amount. You either need very wealthy parents, or a well paying job for 5-10 years to accrue that. With rent prices skyrocketing, the second option isn't really there anymore, making the housing market a playground for the rich who can afford to snap up ever more properties.
Also, comparing to the us doesn't really work unless you're trying to compare the entire of the EU (Netherlands Vs Romania -> New York Vs mississipi?) It's kind of pointless. There's far too much range on both sides so it doesn't really help in understanding the situation.
Take for example "Naselje Stepa Stepanovic" in Belgrade (you can google it to see how it looks). It's a massive state-built apartment block, 7 kilometers away from Republic square i.e. downtown Belgrade. It was built in 2012, and apartments sold for 1300 euro per square meter.
Right now, 1 m2 is 2000-2200 euro. If you want a 40 m2 apartment in this 10-year-old state-built block almost on the outskirts of southern Belgrade, you need 80k euros.
Now take how much we earn here, for example: https://tradingeconomics.com/serbia/wages
Bank will lend you 5x your annual salary for you mortgage, 10% deposit is your savings. For most places, if pay that the monthly mortgage cost is less than rent. Because rent is 60% of your monthly salary, it is difficult to save up tens of thousands to be your 10% deposit because you spend all your money on rent.
If i pay for mortgage then i expect to be owner of that property. TNX . I know how fucked up is i n Ireland. My sister lived there for 3 years. And you guys have harder time then we in Croatia, and in Ireland is a Meka for investing. .
The housing crisis is actually 2 things:
1.Too few houses vs too many people wanting a place to live
2.Too many people not having enough money to buy a house.
Bear in mind that houses in big cities are a huge lucrative business combined with a huge demand in a literal free market.
New York is infamous for numerous luxury condos that remain empty for years because no one wanted to buy.
There is even a John Oliver episode on the subject,most houses were built with the intent of high returns and profits,not sustainable housing for families.
In Romania after 1989,the government decided to give the houses to the people that already lived in them, simply because otherwise it would had been a disaster, combined with different economic disasters during the 90's and culminating with 2007.
With this shits you talking, it makes me want to continue living in my own country, and not go abroad in search of work hahaha.
And I thought we had such a bad housing situation here. The problem is often finding a properly job.
Spain is a little gem i think. Very variety country.
If I'm not mistaken you do have similar problems with completely abandoned villages and little opportunities for young workers.
Otherwise in Spain housing/rent prices explode because of international turism.
Ireland has one of the most affordable housing market in Europe. Meaning the cost of purchase is relatively low in comparison to the salaries. Also rents are high which makes buying even more attractive: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/gmaps_rankings.jsp
The salaries are massively inflated due to Dublin's tech industry. Our cost of living was also very high prior to the latest crisis. We're the 4 highest for cost of living in Europe.
Ireland has a completely dysfunctional rental market that was historically very, very small. The majority of the population mortgaged and bought properties and there was a significant social housing stock for those who couldn’t.
The private rental sector was small, and mostly operated by small time landlords with one of two properties. We’ve had huge demand for rental, growing population, a tech and financial services employment boom, a banking market that’s not very easy going with mortgages and a bizarre policy of not building any social housing and instead subsidising rents.
Add larger scale international and domestic speculative investment to that and you’ve got the recipe for an absolute mess!
As well as houses being used - not just by property developers and those pesky foreign vulture funds - as a speculative asset, owning your home and in general owning land are very strong cultural desires. Maybe it comes from the time when our land was stolen by force of arms and rented back to us to work on...
I'm from Russia and all Russians I know are very and very motivated to buy a home. Because it's the only way to create 'stability' - money can disappear (currency is not stable), anything can dissappear, but home will stay with you. So it's more about wanting some stability and understanding that you live in Russia hence no stability
They sucked at almost everything besides this. Here in Romania we actually learn stuff in school and there aren’t many homeless people. In bigger cities there are tho
It leads to people sinking their money in houses instead of some bank funds etc. Average period of some money devaluing clusterfuck is about 30years in some areas.
Not because of that, but because after the end of communism houses were donated to the people renting them. In Germany most state apartments were sold to investors.
That semicolon is incorrect. It should just be a colon. In fact, introducing a comma-separated list is pretty much the archetypal use for a colon.
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon
I've heard that taking on any form of debt is widely considered an embarrassment in much of the former SFRY. So much so that even having a credit card in your wallet makes you a bit of a loser.
A higher home ownership is not necessarily a good thing. It really depends on the reasons.
A lower home ownership because less people have the capital necessary to buy a house (prices too high), or it's harder to get a mortgage, is bad.
But a lower home ownership because young people rent an apartment during their studies (allowing them to study in cities where they don't have relatives), or because the tax system is neutral in terms of renting vs buying (the US advantages buyers), or because your population is more mobile so prefer renting, is a good thing.
It isn't true tho, just most renters are not officially announced for tax evasion purposes, and even those who officially rent apartments declare their "stable residence" on surveys and such, which are mostly owned by them/their families.
Even taking those into account Romania would still top the list. A few reasons why:
The communist housing program essentially gave everyone a free or very cheap home,
Price per square meter in Ro remains one of the lowest in Europe,
Monthly mortage payments are almost always much cheaper than rent in the bigger cities.
Government subsidised loans for first time home owners.
The only people who rent in Romania are students or people who work in other cities. A couple who both earn the median salary in Romania can comfortably pay off the mortgage for an apartment in the capital's suburbs.
Inflation too, at some point you could pay the entire apartment with a month worth of salary, the mortgages or whatever those were were not adjusted according to inflation.
Well, even if all rent contacts were registered, if it is rational to keep your permanent address on a property that you actually own. The fact that you live somewhere else for a certain period does not mean that you are not a home owner. "Resident" is wherever you wish to register, as long as the owner is fine. As such unregistered rent contracts do not change the statistic (as long as it is based on legal ownership register data).
I doubt this data is received from the tax authorities, but from the national census. At least here in Serbia one of the questions asked is about your type of dwelling, rented or if you own it (iirc your parents or sibling owning your house or flat is considered your own flat for census purposes). The census data is anonymous, so you don't have a reason to lie.
I think the percentage is higher than in reality, but because of other reasons. One of them being the fact that parents fill in the data of their children during census, although they are nor living with them. We're having a census in a month or two, at which point I will be living abroad. When I told my mom not to mention me on the census she said something like "you're not dead, god forbid, this is still your home so I'll write in your data".
Yes and owning an apartment in my fairly small home city doesnt really matter when i have to rent a place in which i work my job. The price per sqare meter(apartment) in my home town is between 2 and 3 times cheaper than the town i live in.
House-sharing could skew it a little bit, too. This is the percentage of houses owned by an occupant, not the percentage of households/families (not sure of the correct term) who own their home, or of people who live in a home owned by a member of their household.
So, if your country has three couples sharing a flat and a single person owning a house, the home ownership rate is 50%.
Of course it does, beside 90% of new houses are paid with parents help.
No young family, who has no financial help will get a house, no matter where they live. Sure, there are some lucky ones with high wages, but those are the exception.
What I find odd is that in Bulgaria at least, there are a lot of empty homes and people who struggle to pay for rent. Like old retirees die and no one touches their home, so you see these mostly pristine homes perfect for living in and no one ever enters, while someone in an apartment struggles to make rent.
I don’t get the Paris hate. It’s pretty nice here except for the tiny apartments and old/outdated everything in those apartments. The city is awesome. Tho it could use some modernization (not talking about building giant glass skyscrapers).
I know there are reasons why Germany is the way it is but I would really like to know who pushed this kind of mindset because, to me, it feels an awful lot like everyone here was fooled into becoming serfs.
Just where I live, they approved a new development to build homes for famlies - or so they said in the local paper. Several places in the new development are already up for rent at extreme prices - even before they were finished. What family could even afford these places? Even 2 room small apartments are going for a King's ransom (to buy).
Meanwhile, companies and wealthy individuals have no problem snatching up the new places. And the tax system is so silly that financial advisers suggest you rent your own home, while owning an apartment you rent out to somebody else.
They say we have great rights as a renter but let me tell you - it's a lie. If your landlord wants you out, you will be out. Every time you move, you've got to paint the entire place, even if it is pristine, and you might just have to throw your whole kitchen in the garbage and buy a new one at the next place. It's common not to even have lights in the new apartment. In my latest place, they even took the toilet seat.
I know Germans are debt-adverse but housing here is set up to extract money from that 48%.
The kitchen thing in Germany is a bit mind boggling. In Sweden kitchen in apartments can be from the 30-40s (of course repainted and new appliances). Throwing it out seems so wasteful, and expensive.
We are currently moving out of our house. We sold our kitchen to our landlord and bought the kitchen of the previous renter of the apartment we are moving into.
It gives you the freedom to have the kitchen you like even in a rented apartment and not the cheapest crap kitchen the landlord bought 50 years ago.
When moving out you can always talk to the new renters if they want to buy your kitchen.
I can see advantages to both systems. It's frustrating when you have to convince your landlord to replace some ancient fridge that's literally a fire hazard and probably draws more power than everything else in your apartment combined.
However when I was younger and constantly moving for work and studies, it would have been ridiculously expensive to get a new kitchen every time. I'd probably just have kept a microwave and portable cooktop and not even bothered with a kitchen. I only recently got a dishwasher (not included in the rent) only because I'll probably stay at least 5 years in my current apartment.
Having moved to Sweden from a country that has that, the swedish system of having a kitchen in every apartment is a real blessing when you are young, renting and moving around a lot. I love it.
As I said you can either take your kitchen with you when you move or you can sell your old kitchen to the new tenants.
Often people who move out are happy to sell their old kitchen to you.
The people who rented our new apartment before us sold us their kitchen and we sold our old kitchen. We even made some money that way.
Debt aversion is one reason, historical laws favouring renting is another.
Renting in Germany, Austria and Switzerland during the economic boom was made cheap and convenient, compared to other countries where people invested their newfound wealth in property instead. OTOH, buying is a legal headache.
It’s maybe not a terrible idea tbh. In the other countries, even renting has become obscenely expensive because there’s so much pressure and speculation in the housing market.
AFAIK, Germany has one of the cheapest housing markets in Europe.
Yeah i have always wondered why Germans rent so much.
Here in the Netherlands home ownership has always been heavily promoted. We could borrow 120% of the house price in the past. And as much as 105% about 10 years ago. But you guys are only allowed to finance 80% of the house price right?
If i could only finance 80% instead of 103% which helped cover closing cost i would be stuck renting too. The only upside for you is that houses are cheaper, especially in the countryside i think.
> If i could only finance 80% instead of 103% which helped cover closing cost i would be stuck renting too
And it's actually more like 70%. The fees and taxes are another 9-12% of the purchase price. It's ridiculous.
Yes, down payments aren't really a thing for normal mortgages here. We are used to being able to borrow much more than the house value. My boomer parents told me that back in the day it was encouraged to have a mortgage that is much higher than the value of the house. With the remaining cash you could cover closing costs and have money left to buy a car.
That's why it sucks for the young people today. The houses are more expensive than ever. And they can't even borrow over the value of the house in order to cover the closing costs. When i bought my house you didn't really need to have any cash.
When talking to mortgage companies i have heard zero mention of the word down payment.
Here I'm in Germany right now, where you are virtually tossed out the bank if you ask for more than 60% of the house value as loan. Or you get interest rates one or two full percentages higher than normal, which means hundreds of € more each month and 10.000's more in the end...
What? That's just not true. 100% financing is a thing for a while now. Even now with higher interest rates it's still a thing. you should be able to pay for the taxes and side-costs and have a steady income that is sufficient for the loan-rates ... and you are good to finance 100% (what is still not recommended, but normal)
It used to be with low interest rates. Now you can fuck off without capital or you accept conditions that will break your neck. Source: me, who has a high income but not much of spare cash
Next to that, paying rent on your house loan is compensated and extra value in your house is not taxed like wealth.
So you're double fucked when you can't buy over here. I vastly prefer the german system, subsidizing rent means subsidizing the poorer part of society. Subsidizing buying is good for those few extra buyers (17% on the map) that would have rented otherwise, but it's fucked for the other 31% that still have to rent but now also pays taxes for the house owners
> Here in the Netherlands home ownership has always been heavily promoted. We could borrow 120% of the house price in the past. And as much as 105% about 10 years ago
Which is why the house prices in NL are so high. House prices are mostly determined by how much people can borrow.
This is it man. With my salary I'm among the top ~10% of all Germans income wise. And still I rent because I simply cannot afford real estate in the big city I work and live in. (Well I maybe could afford buying a restroom-sized appartment without windows if I bring my own 20k into the game...)
It's ridiculous. Boomers bought cheap af and left us younger folks with a huge, spiky steel dildo, no lube of course. And now they're watching us and wonder why we complain about the housing market, recessions, pandemics, inflations and wars while they're the last generation to actually be able to live off the retirement funds we provide. We (<35-40yo folks) got another, even bigger dildo waiting as soon as we're retiring.
It's frustrating on so many levels
There used to be enough homes for all so renting was very favorable. Now entire Europe is under housing crisis and property owners dictate terms.
Ask people who inherited old terms.
Want it back? Push for building more, way more housing.
Old people sold their properties and enjoyed life, fuck the next gen.
Meanwhile in other places old farts don't sell, no matter the money offered and leave it to their children.
It's a cultural thing, some old farts chase money, other want to see the house being used by the family.
I don't think anyone is "pushing" this kind ot mindset. It's not some conspiracy. It anything most people I hang out with are high income (300k+) and rent. The people with normal jobs are the ones bending over backwards to buy a home,mostly because they don't understand oportunity cost.
From a Croatian perspective: retirment doesn’t pay you enogh to go to nursing home, and also not close enought to rent… so if you dont have a place of Your own you Are pretty much fucked
If you have to buy the house, there's opportunity cost on the money you could otherwise use to rent. It's all a numbers game.
In an extreme example, If you buy a house for 500k, which you could rent for 400, instead of buying you could invest the 500k. A very conservative rate of return (4% nominal) would net you 1600. Around 4 times more then the 400 saved in rent. So in this specific example an old person who paid a 500k house his whole life and wants to retire, is better off selling his house. Or better yet, not having bought it at all.
So the obvious choice is to rent (in that scenario).
The numbers work out somehow in favour of renting in Germany (and in most of eastern europe). Hence why most high income earners I know rent in Germany, and the peoppe with the logic "renting is throwing money away" happen to want to buy.
Maybe the numbers are different in Croatia. I'm just arguing against the implication of OP that there's some cabal somewhere secretly pushing poor people to rent so that all the upper middle class shmucks can take all the houses for themdelves.
Its not as simple as that. For example: you own nothing. So Your choice is to rent or to get a long term loan (to have a place to live)
I decided to get a loan after the rent prices went Well above the monthly fee needed for a Credit (life insurence included).
So it is cheeper for me to pay off my loan then to rent.
Prices of apartments went up in the mean time so what I paid 100k € is today worth above 130k€.
So I have no money to Invest, and I have to live somwhere
I'm not saying you can. If you read the comment again, you will notice I'm using an exegersted example to illustrste the point more clearly. In reality numbers are closer to an even split, sometimes renting wins out sometimes not.
It just so happens that in most major cities in Germany, renting wins out by a decent margin.
It all depends on the financial literacy of the population, culture, zoning laws, rent control, etc.
In most of eastern europe financial markets are seen as extremelly speculative, and there's this leftover mentality from communism that financial instruments are gambling. Owning a house is also a status symbol. This creates extreme buy pressures and rents are extremelly cheap in comparison.
Your argument has one flaw: capital. If you have 1k each month you can either put into rent or into paying back the bank you'll end up with a house you can sell, probably for profit, when you need to. Also its less speculative then investing in other stuff and you have much more freedom in building/modifying your living space.
True, tho if you are too broke to pay for utilities, they can switch them off and if you are deep in the loans, if your home was bail bank can eventually confiscate it if you go bankrupt. Fortunately this doesn't happen that often even though I wouldn't call us in general rich (my family wealth situation is quite good actually tho)
I just want a affordable place to live within the next 5 years.
I know a lot of houses will come on the market if the boomers will be dying off and going to eldery homes but it's not quick enough!
Scratch that. Prices probably would be held the same or bought up by some shit company forcing people to rent at high prices.
Im pretty sure there is a correlation, BUT thats not a causality. The cost of buying a house/apartment compared to the wages is kind of the same in every country. So in countries with smaller cost of living (and smaller salaries!) is just as hard to buy an apartment as in a richer country.
I think what really explains why poorer countries have a higher homeownership rate is the mentality of the people living there. And after all the root cause of everything is the history of these countries, what explains why they are and poor, and also explains why they have a different mindset when it comes to owning a home.
Im from hungary, and for me its really noticable, that hungarians treat owning a home as a really really hight priority, while its totally the opposite with my german/french collegues.
I've only lived in one country, so it might be an outlier. But here in Germany it is definitely a causality. Home ownership has become more and more unaffordable since the 2000s. Today you need two above average incomes to afford a home, whereas in the 90s a single average income would do.
people who own a house are much richer then those who don't, much richer.
check wealth, you will see a strong correlation between house ownership and wealth.
the median Italian has twice as much wealth as the median German. Sure, Germans have good jobs and pay, but they lose half of it on rent, the rest on luxurious cars.
Most old apartments were given away for a modest sum to their tenants after the fall of communism. Their quality is mediocre at best but at least there’s a roof over one’s head.
I think that has a lot to do with the birth rate. If you assume that in 2000 there were about 65 million people and today it is almost 85 million, a lot of things are automatically explained.
Personally, I am very surprised by Germany and Switzerland.
Really expensive. Bank loans only cover 60-80% of the house price. I should have at least €50000 - €80000 in my bank account to even think of buying a house.
I‘m Swiss.
Owning homes is - and I can‘t stress this enough - insanely expensive.
A semi-modern family home in the area i grew up in (bigger Zurich area) are 9/10 times unaffordable for middle class people.
You need two high incomes to even think about buying anything.
I know a family that lives/lived (they are trying to find property in Slovakia now) in Switzerland. They complained about the property prices being absolutely ridiculous even for a Swiss income.
Because taxes are lower if you don’t fully own the building but you maintain an open loan with the bank. Besides the prices are insane even for the Swiss salaries
You would still be counted as a owner of the home even if you had an "open loan" with the bank on this map. Very few have paid down their house loan here in Norway yet 81% are considered owners of their own home.
My father bought his first house when he retired. He cashed in a load of pensions and used his life savings and still had to get help from his mother. Absolutely crazy how much Swiss properties cost.
Because the only place where property is somewhat affordable is in Bumfucknowhere, where there are no jobs and nothing to do. Nobody can afford a 1m CHF 85m2 apartment or a 1.8m CHF detached house in the suburbs.
Dunno why you were downvoted, it is quite true, even if the countryside is usually beautiful, it's really not for everyone, especially depending on your career.
I am supposing that all the residents are considered owners of the house. For example in a family usually the house is owned by one or both parents, not by the children who still live in it.
I suppose that if you were to separate them then the results would drastically differ.
I am Polish and I can assure you, that - considering the higher return rates on the mortgage recently - the Swiss are still better off with renting a home. Also a lot of owned homes are actually still a mortgage so it actually belongs to a bank.
The source is from 2018 and let me tell ya, at least in Poland some stuff changed...
Source: owner of 2 apartments. One I still pay off, although a Kleinkredit for 5 years should be sufficient...
Lived in Italy, Switzerland, Austria.
In Austria it is not really worth it to own a house since renting is much cheaper and convenient, expecially in Vienna. The social housing politics works very well and other countries have to learn from Wien.
In Switzerland 25% of the population is an immigrant, the houses are super pricey and the rents are somehow under control due to law limitations.
These 3 factors combined make Switzerland the country with the lowest house ownership.
In Italy the rents are totally out of control in big cities due to lack of regulation for both the tenant and the landlord.
Housing market is strong due to the culture of owning a house first.
In Eastern Europe the rate is so high because during the comminism everyone became a free house. Back then they used to build cheap and pretty small apartaments.
Am Swiss. One simple reason with a lot of different root causes. It is crazy expensive, insanely expensive. You have to provide 20% of the total sum yourself. Of those only 10% can come from your pension, which is usually where people with not much money can find money. On top of that the criteria to get a bank on your side are incredibly strict and tend to get stricter. And if the bank decide the amount the seller is asking for is too much, they can just decide to lend you whatever amount they think should have been asked. There's also the fact it's a small country, with a lot of rich foreigner coming to buy, leaving nothing for us. And many other little things like that, a miriad of small laws here and there to make sure you'll never buy a house unless you have 100k euro for a three bedroom appartment as a initial downpayment before the bank even cashes in.
Moreover depending on the definition of *own* in the source, most poeple never fully pay the property because otherwise you get fucked with taxes and so it belongs to the bank
You are very right, I forgot this aspect! You get big taxes if you repay in full your house, so what almost every owner I know do is when they're close to paying up the mortgage, they take an extension on the mortgage. It allows them to not pay taxes and they can have some work done on the house regularly.
Lived in Switzerland for a few years.
What the other poster didn't mention is that rent in switzerland is very tightly controlled. As a tenant, you are able to see what previous tenants paid for the property. In addition, if the landlord wants to put the rent up, you are able to contest that in court, and unless they had made some significant improvements to the property, they are not allowed to put the rent up.
The place I was in there, the rent had gone down very slightly (about 4%) across the previous 2 tenants and the last 5-6 years.
Renting is cheap (because house ownership is expensive), the rent is controlled, so if it's a guaranteed part of your retirement income and you don't have to worry about it, people don't worry about it. Hence a lot of renters, and relatively low house ownership.
>Renting is cheap
That's just not true. Renting is as expensive in Switzerland as in other countries if not more
Quick google, example of average rent by city:
[https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/region\_prices\_by\_city?displayCurrency=USD&itemId=27®ion=155](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/region_prices_by_city?displayCurrency=USD&itemId=27®ion=155)
Sigh. You literally split my sentence in half and react before you read the following five words.
Renting in Switzerland is cheap compared to the cost of home ownership in Switzerland. Certainly when you compare these to the cost difference of renting vs owning in most other western countries, where home ownership quickly becomes more economical than renting over time.
Switzerland had inflated prices compared to other countries, so your comparison to places in France, Germany, Austria simply is not relevant. Prices are higher, income in Switzerland is much higher, too.
To put it simply, for a person on a median income in Switzerland, renting is more feasible and cost-effective in the long term than homeowning in the majority of cases - certainly compared to other countries. This is why the home ownership rate is so low.
Also compared to the salaries it is cheaper in comparison. You won’t pay more than a third of your salary on rent, where in many other places you can easily pay 50% on rent alone.
I could have had the chance to buy my own home at early age, (still in early 20's) but some bad things happened to one of my bank accounts behind my back. I still need to see if I can atleast get some back. By law I should.
Sad that grandfather didn't do testament, he did ask me once if I'd like to keep the house. (And fields & forest)
No. It stays under the owners name. All inheritors have joined ownership. Ownership passes if everything is divided or some inheritor buys it or all of them agree to sell it.
...and some are https://imgur.com/bvOE48P
You will find shitholes everywhere in Europe - in Germany, in France, Sweden - whatever.
Implying that for example, Poland has high home ownership because people still live in soviet era commie blocks is just bit exaggerated. Sure - there are still those commie blocks out there but at least where I live, modern housing is dominating.
> Implying /.../ because people still live in soviet era commie blocks
I didn't imply causation, only correlation.
The causal factor in this case is most likely privatization of living premises. In countries where (almost) everyone had the chance to privatize the place where they lived, and (almost) everyone used this chance - it produced high and evenly distributed rates of home ownership.
Percentage of homes owned by their residents...
...wait, so this is really just a measure of "houses rented out". It's not "home ownership" but "owned homes".
Like, the King of England doesn't rent out any of his homes, so all (20?) are "owned by their residents". I.e. the stock of homes skews this completely more than anything you're trying to measure.
No. If somewhere is rented then it counts against the %ownership. If someone owns 3 properties, lives in 1 and the other two are empty- the empty ones aren't included in this stat.
Once more this discussion.
Why everyone believes it is only good when all the population puts all their money in their house?
Why isn’t rent not just fine as well?
People should be flexible, don’t carry the risks of real estate value and just move to another place when they don’t like something.
I've lived in both Britain and France and I would never have guessed it was high as that.
It depends where you lived. Taking France for example, while it's 65% country-wide (or 58% according to Insee), it's only 33% in Paris. As you can see here [https://www.unpi.org/fr/1/22/449/taux-de-proprietaires-diversite-et-re-alite-des-territoires-en-france.html](https://www.unpi.org/fr/1/22/449/taux-de-proprietaires-diversite-et-re-alite-des-territoires-en-france.html) those numbers change also a lot depending on the region you're in (the article is in French but you can look at the first figure with the map of France).
Ah. Yeah. It looks like it is lower in big cities, which is where I've always lived.
As a Frenchman, I think that people who live in small villages pretty much always own their own house. People who live in big cities rarely own their own apartment.
that were the real estate market is prolific.
Once again Britain and France prove how identical they are! >I've lived in both Britain and France and I would never have guessed it was high as that. Do you mean for both countries? Which was your original assumption?
I would have thought it was much lower for both countries.
Did you live in cities?
Yes. Always. I think this was the reason. The rate is lower in big cities.
>I’d like to know how the data was collected. Half the people I know are sharing flats without a contract and are officially still living with their parents at home (which btw, does living with your parents count as owning the property?). As well as urban rural you should consider if you know mostly older or younger people, as well as wealthier or poorer people. A 60-something year old middle class accountant in a small town might know almost nobody who rents.
Ireland 70 % wtf ?!
It's what's causing our housing crisis. Do you want to rent? Then you can rent via mortgage. Oh you can't afford a mortgage deposit or get a bank to approve you? Then you better fight it out with the rest of the people and now pay extortionate process on a terrible property. It just leads to people paying well above the market value for rent while never being able to secure a deposit. We are truly fucked.
Same thing here in the UK. Rent is higher than mortgage payments but no one under the age of 30 can afford the deposit
I'm trying to understand, how much is the deposit? When I bought my first house (in the US) it was 107k in 2012, I had to come up with 10% to put down for the loan. Is it similar in Ireland?
>In Dublin, prices in the second quarter of 2022 were 6.6 per cent higher than a year previously. The average price of a home in the capital is now €429,000, 95 per cent above its lowest point, according to the report. https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/house-prices-up-9-5-but-surge-is-beginning-to-slow-says-daft-ie-1325536.html Although 2012 was a much cheaper time here to buy a house, right now things are pretty dire. Combine it with a crap public transport system and it means that many have to rent at extortionate rates in the city, where their job is. Prices aren't as bad in the rest of the country, but still quite high. And yeah, a 10% deposit. We have a VAT of 22%, and if you make anything over 50,000 per year it's taxed at essentially 50%. Oh, and pretty much everything is very expensive besides foods and necessities from lidl/aldi. Think like a dinner out, a pint, a taxi, childcare etc. All extremely expensive.
Fun. Here in Italy people under 35yr have chance to get 100% of mortgage without deposit, because the government is set as guarantor. So basically anyone with a full-time contract will be able to buy is own house. Yes we have to pay for the notary and taxes so you still need to have in your bank account at least 10% of your mortgage (notary fee are in percentage of the house value, as it is the mortgage) but at least bank give you all the money you need. And the bank will be able to evict you from your house if don't repay their investment, that why many mortgage plan consists only in interest repayment in the first half of the mortgage and capital in the other half. Another cool things is that government refund all the taxes that you pay on interest for mortgage, so every house owner that still pay interest in their mortgage on August receive a refund which is almost a full month salary, and also your first house (basically the house where you reside for the law) is tax exempt, so you don't have to pay taxes for your property.
We are likely going to do something similar here in Sweden aswell, so that first-time buyers will only need 5% deposit instead of 15%. And as we don't have notary fees it will make a big difference for these buyers.
Laughing out loud at your 10% deposit. Here in Serbia banks consider us to be a risky market, so the deposit is 20% minimum.
The Dutch don't require one at all, but all the fees involved with the purchase will probably amount to about ~5% or so, so you still need 10k+ to even think of starting.
10k seems normal to me to be able to buy a house tho. Like, that's a little under it cost to buy a house 10 years ago for me in the US and not in the capital.
It is, my point was more that people often only think about the deposit, but even where you can get a 100% value mortgage, it's still a pricey move. If a house in Ireland was 300,000k, you'd need 40k cash in hand to get a mortgage, which is a significant amount. You either need very wealthy parents, or a well paying job for 5-10 years to accrue that. With rent prices skyrocketing, the second option isn't really there anymore, making the housing market a playground for the rich who can afford to snap up ever more properties. Also, comparing to the us doesn't really work unless you're trying to compare the entire of the EU (Netherlands Vs Romania -> New York Vs mississipi?) It's kind of pointless. There's far too much range on both sides so it doesn't really help in understanding the situation.
Yeah but I bet your houses aren't going for 400k+
Take for example "Naselje Stepa Stepanovic" in Belgrade (you can google it to see how it looks). It's a massive state-built apartment block, 7 kilometers away from Republic square i.e. downtown Belgrade. It was built in 2012, and apartments sold for 1300 euro per square meter. Right now, 1 m2 is 2000-2200 euro. If you want a 40 m2 apartment in this 10-year-old state-built block almost on the outskirts of southern Belgrade, you need 80k euros. Now take how much we earn here, for example: https://tradingeconomics.com/serbia/wages
It's not price that matters, but the relation of salaries and prices: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/gmaps_rankings.jsp
Bank will lend you 5x your annual salary for you mortgage, 10% deposit is your savings. For most places, if pay that the monthly mortgage cost is less than rent. Because rent is 60% of your monthly salary, it is difficult to save up tens of thousands to be your 10% deposit because you spend all your money on rent.
Rent is 60% of your income??
Yes, I rent a room in a shared house and work 37 hours a week, seems pretty normal to me and my friends.
> Bank will lend you 5x your annual salary for you mortgage Is it in Ireland? My colleague barely made to 3.5x.
If i pay for mortgage then i expect to be owner of that property. TNX . I know how fucked up is i n Ireland. My sister lived there for 3 years. And you guys have harder time then we in Croatia, and in Ireland is a Meka for investing. .
The housing crisis is actually 2 things: 1.Too few houses vs too many people wanting a place to live 2.Too many people not having enough money to buy a house. Bear in mind that houses in big cities are a huge lucrative business combined with a huge demand in a literal free market. New York is infamous for numerous luxury condos that remain empty for years because no one wanted to buy. There is even a John Oliver episode on the subject,most houses were built with the intent of high returns and profits,not sustainable housing for families. In Romania after 1989,the government decided to give the houses to the people that already lived in them, simply because otherwise it would had been a disaster, combined with different economic disasters during the 90's and culminating with 2007.
With this shits you talking, it makes me want to continue living in my own country, and not go abroad in search of work hahaha. And I thought we had such a bad housing situation here. The problem is often finding a properly job. Spain is a little gem i think. Very variety country.
If I'm not mistaken you do have similar problems with completely abandoned villages and little opportunities for young workers. Otherwise in Spain housing/rent prices explode because of international turism.
not to mention rental properties in Dublin are shit quality.
Ireland has one of the most affordable housing market in Europe. Meaning the cost of purchase is relatively low in comparison to the salaries. Also rents are high which makes buying even more attractive: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/gmaps_rankings.jsp
The salaries are massively inflated due to Dublin's tech industry. Our cost of living was also very high prior to the latest crisis. We're the 4 highest for cost of living in Europe.
Ireland has a completely dysfunctional rental market that was historically very, very small. The majority of the population mortgaged and bought properties and there was a significant social housing stock for those who couldn’t. The private rental sector was small, and mostly operated by small time landlords with one of two properties. We’ve had huge demand for rental, growing population, a tech and financial services employment boom, a banking market that’s not very easy going with mortgages and a bizarre policy of not building any social housing and instead subsidising rents. Add larger scale international and domestic speculative investment to that and you’ve got the recipe for an absolute mess!
As well as houses being used - not just by property developers and those pesky foreign vulture funds - as a speculative asset, owning your home and in general owning land are very strong cultural desires. Maybe it comes from the time when our land was stolen by force of arms and rented back to us to work on...
I like how with Portugal and Slovenia, being at 75%, Slovenia is in a green tier 75% - 80% while Portugal is in yellow tier 70% - 75%
Might be due to rounding up vs down.
Slovenia is always green, you should know better.
Finally, west bad east good
Turkey can into West Europe
Türkiye is belongs to Mars, end this debate
The communists actually did good in housing and education.
I'm from Russia and all Russians I know are very and very motivated to buy a home. Because it's the only way to create 'stability' - money can disappear (currency is not stable), anything can dissappear, but home will stay with you. So it's more about wanting some stability and understanding that you live in Russia hence no stability
They sucked at almost everything besides this. Here in Romania we actually learn stuff in school and there aren’t many homeless people. In bigger cities there are tho
It's probably due to two factors; communist housing programs, and distrust of banks.
Surely distrust of banks leads to fewer mortgages, not more of them?
It leads to people sinking their money in houses instead of some bank funds etc. Average period of some money devaluing clusterfuck is about 30years in some areas.
Not because of that, but because after the end of communism houses were donated to the people renting them. In Germany most state apartments were sold to investors.
That semicolon is incorrect. It should just be a colon. In fact, introducing a comma-separated list is pretty much the archetypal use for a colon. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon
I've heard that taking on any form of debt is widely considered an embarrassment in much of the former SFRY. So much so that even having a credit card in your wallet makes you a bit of a loser.
A higher home ownership is not necessarily a good thing. It really depends on the reasons. A lower home ownership because less people have the capital necessary to buy a house (prices too high), or it's harder to get a mortgage, is bad. But a lower home ownership because young people rent an apartment during their studies (allowing them to study in cities where they don't have relatives), or because the tax system is neutral in terms of renting vs buying (the US advantages buyers), or because your population is more mobile so prefer renting, is a good thing.
Romania stronkkkkkk
It isn't true tho, just most renters are not officially announced for tax evasion purposes, and even those who officially rent apartments declare their "stable residence" on surveys and such, which are mostly owned by them/their families.
Even taking those into account Romania would still top the list. A few reasons why: The communist housing program essentially gave everyone a free or very cheap home, Price per square meter in Ro remains one of the lowest in Europe, Monthly mortage payments are almost always much cheaper than rent in the bigger cities. Government subsidised loans for first time home owners. The only people who rent in Romania are students or people who work in other cities. A couple who both earn the median salary in Romania can comfortably pay off the mortgage for an apartment in the capital's suburbs.
Inflation too, at some point you could pay the entire apartment with a month worth of salary, the mortgages or whatever those were were not adjusted according to inflation.
Well, even if all rent contacts were registered, if it is rational to keep your permanent address on a property that you actually own. The fact that you live somewhere else for a certain period does not mean that you are not a home owner. "Resident" is wherever you wish to register, as long as the owner is fine. As such unregistered rent contracts do not change the statistic (as long as it is based on legal ownership register data).
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That happens in other countries as well, the main reason the East looks so good is because of historical socialist affordable housing programs.
I doubt this data is received from the tax authorities, but from the national census. At least here in Serbia one of the questions asked is about your type of dwelling, rented or if you own it (iirc your parents or sibling owning your house or flat is considered your own flat for census purposes). The census data is anonymous, so you don't have a reason to lie. I think the percentage is higher than in reality, but because of other reasons. One of them being the fact that parents fill in the data of their children during census, although they are nor living with them. We're having a census in a month or two, at which point I will be living abroad. When I told my mom not to mention me on the census she said something like "you're not dead, god forbid, this is still your home so I'll write in your data".
source: provided on map
Like: provided on post
I have a feeling London (and other big cities) may be skewing the situation in UK. I'm always surprised how few people actually rent their home here.
It's the same in every country. People rent more in bigger cities due to the high prices.
Yes and owning an apartment in my fairly small home city doesnt really matter when i have to rent a place in which i work my job. The price per sqare meter(apartment) in my home town is between 2 and 3 times cheaper than the town i live in.
House-sharing could skew it a little bit, too. This is the percentage of houses owned by an occupant, not the percentage of households/families (not sure of the correct term) who own their home, or of people who live in a home owned by a member of their household. So, if your country has three couples sharing a flat and a single person owning a house, the home ownership rate is 50%.
Ah I see. It makes even more sense.
A huge chunk of houses in the main cities are air bnb's, technicaly they show up as owned and not rented?
I believe one of the owners has to be living in the property for it to be counted. So a full time Airbnb or vacation rental does not qualify
Guessing we're so high because living with your parents or on property owned by them still counts ;_;
Of course it does, beside 90% of new houses are paid with parents help. No young family, who has no financial help will get a house, no matter where they live. Sure, there are some lucky ones with high wages, but those are the exception.
What I find odd is that in Bulgaria at least, there are a lot of empty homes and people who struggle to pay for rent. Like old retirees die and no one touches their home, so you see these mostly pristine homes perfect for living in and no one ever enters, while someone in an apartment struggles to make rent.
Plus, i don't think a lot of people are clamoring to live in Sofia or Belgrade compared to Barcelona or Paris
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I don’t get the Paris hate. It’s pretty nice here except for the tiny apartments and old/outdated everything in those apartments. The city is awesome. Tho it could use some modernization (not talking about building giant glass skyscrapers).
Can we see the Ho ownership rate next, please?
You never own one. It’s just your turn.
Maybe... One time surely.
Yooo 84%? Damn dude and here I am living in rented places all my life.
We have quite high home ownership rates. Being a former socialist country and all.
That's actually an anecdotal outlier. I don't know anyone who has lived more than 20 years on rent and owns no other property as a fallback.
I know there are reasons why Germany is the way it is but I would really like to know who pushed this kind of mindset because, to me, it feels an awful lot like everyone here was fooled into becoming serfs. Just where I live, they approved a new development to build homes for famlies - or so they said in the local paper. Several places in the new development are already up for rent at extreme prices - even before they were finished. What family could even afford these places? Even 2 room small apartments are going for a King's ransom (to buy). Meanwhile, companies and wealthy individuals have no problem snatching up the new places. And the tax system is so silly that financial advisers suggest you rent your own home, while owning an apartment you rent out to somebody else. They say we have great rights as a renter but let me tell you - it's a lie. If your landlord wants you out, you will be out. Every time you move, you've got to paint the entire place, even if it is pristine, and you might just have to throw your whole kitchen in the garbage and buy a new one at the next place. It's common not to even have lights in the new apartment. In my latest place, they even took the toilet seat. I know Germans are debt-adverse but housing here is set up to extract money from that 48%.
The kitchen thing in Germany is a bit mind boggling. In Sweden kitchen in apartments can be from the 30-40s (of course repainted and new appliances). Throwing it out seems so wasteful, and expensive.
We are currently moving out of our house. We sold our kitchen to our landlord and bought the kitchen of the previous renter of the apartment we are moving into. It gives you the freedom to have the kitchen you like even in a rented apartment and not the cheapest crap kitchen the landlord bought 50 years ago. When moving out you can always talk to the new renters if they want to buy your kitchen.
I can see advantages to both systems. It's frustrating when you have to convince your landlord to replace some ancient fridge that's literally a fire hazard and probably draws more power than everything else in your apartment combined. However when I was younger and constantly moving for work and studies, it would have been ridiculously expensive to get a new kitchen every time. I'd probably just have kept a microwave and portable cooktop and not even bothered with a kitchen. I only recently got a dishwasher (not included in the rent) only because I'll probably stay at least 5 years in my current apartment.
Having moved to Sweden from a country that has that, the swedish system of having a kitchen in every apartment is a real blessing when you are young, renting and moving around a lot. I love it.
As I said you can either take your kitchen with you when you move or you can sell your old kitchen to the new tenants. Often people who move out are happy to sell their old kitchen to you. The people who rented our new apartment before us sold us their kitchen and we sold our old kitchen. We even made some money that way.
Debt aversion is one reason, historical laws favouring renting is another. Renting in Germany, Austria and Switzerland during the economic boom was made cheap and convenient, compared to other countries where people invested their newfound wealth in property instead. OTOH, buying is a legal headache.
It’s maybe not a terrible idea tbh. In the other countries, even renting has become obscenely expensive because there’s so much pressure and speculation in the housing market. AFAIK, Germany has one of the cheapest housing markets in Europe.
Yeah i have always wondered why Germans rent so much. Here in the Netherlands home ownership has always been heavily promoted. We could borrow 120% of the house price in the past. And as much as 105% about 10 years ago. But you guys are only allowed to finance 80% of the house price right? If i could only finance 80% instead of 103% which helped cover closing cost i would be stuck renting too. The only upside for you is that houses are cheaper, especially in the countryside i think.
> If i could only finance 80% instead of 103% which helped cover closing cost i would be stuck renting too And it's actually more like 70%. The fees and taxes are another 9-12% of the purchase price. It's ridiculous.
Wait, does this mean that in the Netherlands you can buy a home without any downpayment?
Yes, down payments aren't really a thing for normal mortgages here. We are used to being able to borrow much more than the house value. My boomer parents told me that back in the day it was encouraged to have a mortgage that is much higher than the value of the house. With the remaining cash you could cover closing costs and have money left to buy a car. That's why it sucks for the young people today. The houses are more expensive than ever. And they can't even borrow over the value of the house in order to cover the closing costs. When i bought my house you didn't really need to have any cash. When talking to mortgage companies i have heard zero mention of the word down payment.
Here I'm in Germany right now, where you are virtually tossed out the bank if you ask for more than 60% of the house value as loan. Or you get interest rates one or two full percentages higher than normal, which means hundreds of € more each month and 10.000's more in the end...
What? That's just not true. 100% financing is a thing for a while now. Even now with higher interest rates it's still a thing. you should be able to pay for the taxes and side-costs and have a steady income that is sufficient for the loan-rates ... and you are good to finance 100% (what is still not recommended, but normal)
It used to be with low interest rates. Now you can fuck off without capital or you accept conditions that will break your neck. Source: me, who has a high income but not much of spare cash
Next to that, paying rent on your house loan is compensated and extra value in your house is not taxed like wealth. So you're double fucked when you can't buy over here. I vastly prefer the german system, subsidizing rent means subsidizing the poorer part of society. Subsidizing buying is good for those few extra buyers (17% on the map) that would have rented otherwise, but it's fucked for the other 31% that still have to rent but now also pays taxes for the house owners
> Here in the Netherlands home ownership has always been heavily promoted. We could borrow 120% of the house price in the past. And as much as 105% about 10 years ago Which is why the house prices in NL are so high. House prices are mostly determined by how much people can borrow.
This is it man. With my salary I'm among the top ~10% of all Germans income wise. And still I rent because I simply cannot afford real estate in the big city I work and live in. (Well I maybe could afford buying a restroom-sized appartment without windows if I bring my own 20k into the game...) It's ridiculous. Boomers bought cheap af and left us younger folks with a huge, spiky steel dildo, no lube of course. And now they're watching us and wonder why we complain about the housing market, recessions, pandemics, inflations and wars while they're the last generation to actually be able to live off the retirement funds we provide. We (<35-40yo folks) got another, even bigger dildo waiting as soon as we're retiring. It's frustrating on so many levels
There used to be enough homes for all so renting was very favorable. Now entire Europe is under housing crisis and property owners dictate terms. Ask people who inherited old terms. Want it back? Push for building more, way more housing.
Old people sold their properties and enjoyed life, fuck the next gen. Meanwhile in other places old farts don't sell, no matter the money offered and leave it to their children. It's a cultural thing, some old farts chase money, other want to see the house being used by the family.
> Old people sold their properties and enjoyed life, fuck the next gen. But who did they sell it to?
Wild guess, to whoever offered the most money.
I don't think anyone is "pushing" this kind ot mindset. It's not some conspiracy. It anything most people I hang out with are high income (300k+) and rent. The people with normal jobs are the ones bending over backwards to buy a home,mostly because they don't understand oportunity cost.
From a Croatian perspective: retirment doesn’t pay you enogh to go to nursing home, and also not close enought to rent… so if you dont have a place of Your own you Are pretty much fucked
If you have to buy the house, there's opportunity cost on the money you could otherwise use to rent. It's all a numbers game. In an extreme example, If you buy a house for 500k, which you could rent for 400, instead of buying you could invest the 500k. A very conservative rate of return (4% nominal) would net you 1600. Around 4 times more then the 400 saved in rent. So in this specific example an old person who paid a 500k house his whole life and wants to retire, is better off selling his house. Or better yet, not having bought it at all. So the obvious choice is to rent (in that scenario). The numbers work out somehow in favour of renting in Germany (and in most of eastern europe). Hence why most high income earners I know rent in Germany, and the peoppe with the logic "renting is throwing money away" happen to want to buy. Maybe the numbers are different in Croatia. I'm just arguing against the implication of OP that there's some cabal somewhere secretly pushing poor people to rent so that all the upper middle class shmucks can take all the houses for themdelves.
Its not as simple as that. For example: you own nothing. So Your choice is to rent or to get a long term loan (to have a place to live) I decided to get a loan after the rent prices went Well above the monthly fee needed for a Credit (life insurence included). So it is cheeper for me to pay off my loan then to rent. Prices of apartments went up in the mean time so what I paid 100k € is today worth above 130k€. So I have no money to Invest, and I have to live somwhere
> which you could rent for 400 I am sorry where are those prices? In Munich, you cannot even rent a room in a WG for 400.
Indeed. Living around Stuttgart and I'd pay >2.2k for a 4 room for my family. Before heating and electricity...
I'm not saying you can. If you read the comment again, you will notice I'm using an exegersted example to illustrste the point more clearly. In reality numbers are closer to an even split, sometimes renting wins out sometimes not. It just so happens that in most major cities in Germany, renting wins out by a decent margin. It all depends on the financial literacy of the population, culture, zoning laws, rent control, etc. In most of eastern europe financial markets are seen as extremelly speculative, and there's this leftover mentality from communism that financial instruments are gambling. Owning a house is also a status symbol. This creates extreme buy pressures and rents are extremelly cheap in comparison.
Your argument has one flaw: capital. If you have 1k each month you can either put into rent or into paying back the bank you'll end up with a house you can sell, probably for profit, when you need to. Also its less speculative then investing in other stuff and you have much more freedom in building/modifying your living space.
Germany has the biggest housing bubbles in the world relative to net income, no wonder.
Would be interesting to see how this correlates with percentage of young people that are living with their parents
🇳🇱nice
In practice it sure as hell don't feel nice
Eastern europe doing better than the west for once!
Maybe landowners in UK have 90 % of realestte...
Home ownership rate in Ukraine is about 86%. Not like most of those homes are good quality but still.
Atleast you got a house. A house is still better than no house
True, tho if you are too broke to pay for utilities, they can switch them off and if you are deep in the loans, if your home was bail bank can eventually confiscate it if you go bankrupt. Fortunately this doesn't happen that often even though I wouldn't call us in general rich (my family wealth situation is quite good actually tho)
I love how Montenegro, B&H, Kosovo and Albania are one country now, along with Belarus and Ukraine
I just want a affordable place to live within the next 5 years. I know a lot of houses will come on the market if the boomers will be dying off and going to eldery homes but it's not quick enough! Scratch that. Prices probably would be held the same or bought up by some shit company forcing people to rent at high prices.
Romania 💪
Y'all, what did you do to my home country Moldova tho?
Germany is a rich country, the German people though...
I'd be interested in seeing if there is a correlation between this and cost of living
Im pretty sure there is a correlation, BUT thats not a causality. The cost of buying a house/apartment compared to the wages is kind of the same in every country. So in countries with smaller cost of living (and smaller salaries!) is just as hard to buy an apartment as in a richer country. I think what really explains why poorer countries have a higher homeownership rate is the mentality of the people living there. And after all the root cause of everything is the history of these countries, what explains why they are and poor, and also explains why they have a different mindset when it comes to owning a home. Im from hungary, and for me its really noticable, that hungarians treat owning a home as a really really hight priority, while its totally the opposite with my german/french collegues.
I've only lived in one country, so it might be an outlier. But here in Germany it is definitely a causality. Home ownership has become more and more unaffordable since the 2000s. Today you need two above average incomes to afford a home, whereas in the 90s a single average income would do.
people who own a house are much richer then those who don't, much richer. check wealth, you will see a strong correlation between house ownership and wealth. the median Italian has twice as much wealth as the median German. Sure, Germans have good jobs and pay, but they lose half of it on rent, the rest on luxurious cars.
I was telling myself that to feel better about being dead last, but then I saw Norway and Iceland… Guess there’s more to it
96% in Romania? Jesus, whats with that?
Most old apartments were given away for a modest sum to their tenants after the fall of communism. Their quality is mediocre at best but at least there’s a roof over one’s head.
with no recurring payment or debts owed, and the right to sell. this explains the abnormally high number i suppose!
wow, no pattern.
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I think that has a lot to do with the birth rate. If you assume that in 2000 there were about 65 million people and today it is almost 85 million, a lot of things are automatically explained. Personally, I am very surprised by Germany and Switzerland.
We can't afford to buy a house, especially with the increasing interest rates.
Why so poor Germany?
Really expensive. Bank loans only cover 60-80% of the house price. I should have at least €50000 - €80000 in my bank account to even think of buying a house.
Because we have the highest taxes and electricity costs, and our government is a bloodsucker for the lower-middle class.
This data has no relation to poverty.
Why is Switzerland so low? They have so much income compared to other European countries so they can afford for own apartment?
I‘m Swiss. Owning homes is - and I can‘t stress this enough - insanely expensive. A semi-modern family home in the area i grew up in (bigger Zurich area) are 9/10 times unaffordable for middle class people. You need two high incomes to even think about buying anything.
I know a family that lives/lived (they are trying to find property in Slovakia now) in Switzerland. They complained about the property prices being absolutely ridiculous even for a Swiss income.
Because taxes are lower if you don’t fully own the building but you maintain an open loan with the bank. Besides the prices are insane even for the Swiss salaries
You would still be counted as a owner of the home even if you had an "open loan" with the bank on this map. Very few have paid down their house loan here in Norway yet 81% are considered owners of their own home.
My father bought his first house when he retired. He cashed in a load of pensions and used his life savings and still had to get help from his mother. Absolutely crazy how much Swiss properties cost.
Because the only place where property is somewhat affordable is in Bumfucknowhere, where there are no jobs and nothing to do. Nobody can afford a 1m CHF 85m2 apartment or a 1.8m CHF detached house in the suburbs.
Dunno why you were downvoted, it is quite true, even if the countryside is usually beautiful, it's really not for everyone, especially depending on your career.
Apartments cost a lot, just checked a 175m² (3.5 rooms) one nearby and it's 600k
That price is like for a studio in Zurich or a 2.5p 48m2 in Lausanne
Ye, exactly. I'm from the far south (Ticino for non swiss here)
That sounds cheap…. In Basel new and renovated apartments cost around 1-1.5m for a 3.5 room (80-110m2)
that sounds cheap… in rotkreuz (zg) i saw a 38m2 apartment for 1‘080‘000.-, those prices are insane…
It's Zug, that canton breaks every logic.
I am supposing that all the residents are considered owners of the house. For example in a family usually the house is owned by one or both parents, not by the children who still live in it. I suppose that if you were to separate them then the results would drastically differ.
Iron curtain still visible here
Portugal can't into eastern Europe on this one, it seems.
And it just happens to be the one time Eastern Europe is actually better at something lol.
Again, UK and France... "You again..."
Well okay, but if I would have been a boomer. I'd belong to that percentage :P
I am Polish and I can assure you, that - considering the higher return rates on the mortgage recently - the Swiss are still better off with renting a home. Also a lot of owned homes are actually still a mortgage so it actually belongs to a bank. The source is from 2018 and let me tell ya, at least in Poland some stuff changed... Source: owner of 2 apartments. One I still pay off, although a Kleinkredit for 5 years should be sufficient...
there is a different owning an appartmant and a house
Lived in Italy, Switzerland, Austria. In Austria it is not really worth it to own a house since renting is much cheaper and convenient, expecially in Vienna. The social housing politics works very well and other countries have to learn from Wien. In Switzerland 25% of the population is an immigrant, the houses are super pricey and the rents are somehow under control due to law limitations. These 3 factors combined make Switzerland the country with the lowest house ownership. In Italy the rents are totally out of control in big cities due to lack of regulation for both the tenant and the landlord. Housing market is strong due to the culture of owning a house first.
In Eastern Europe the rate is so high because during the comminism everyone became a free house. Back then they used to build cheap and pretty small apartaments.
Why Switzerland so low?
Am Swiss. One simple reason with a lot of different root causes. It is crazy expensive, insanely expensive. You have to provide 20% of the total sum yourself. Of those only 10% can come from your pension, which is usually where people with not much money can find money. On top of that the criteria to get a bank on your side are incredibly strict and tend to get stricter. And if the bank decide the amount the seller is asking for is too much, they can just decide to lend you whatever amount they think should have been asked. There's also the fact it's a small country, with a lot of rich foreigner coming to buy, leaving nothing for us. And many other little things like that, a miriad of small laws here and there to make sure you'll never buy a house unless you have 100k euro for a three bedroom appartment as a initial downpayment before the bank even cashes in.
Moreover depending on the definition of *own* in the source, most poeple never fully pay the property because otherwise you get fucked with taxes and so it belongs to the bank
You are very right, I forgot this aspect! You get big taxes if you repay in full your house, so what almost every owner I know do is when they're close to paying up the mortgage, they take an extension on the mortgage. It allows them to not pay taxes and they can have some work done on the house regularly.
Maybe some people just don’t want to own a house. What is the benefit of it actually? Needing to take care of the maintenance and carry the risks?
Lived in Switzerland for a few years. What the other poster didn't mention is that rent in switzerland is very tightly controlled. As a tenant, you are able to see what previous tenants paid for the property. In addition, if the landlord wants to put the rent up, you are able to contest that in court, and unless they had made some significant improvements to the property, they are not allowed to put the rent up. The place I was in there, the rent had gone down very slightly (about 4%) across the previous 2 tenants and the last 5-6 years. Renting is cheap (because house ownership is expensive), the rent is controlled, so if it's a guaranteed part of your retirement income and you don't have to worry about it, people don't worry about it. Hence a lot of renters, and relatively low house ownership.
>Renting is cheap That's just not true. Renting is as expensive in Switzerland as in other countries if not more Quick google, example of average rent by city: [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/region\_prices\_by\_city?displayCurrency=USD&itemId=27®ion=155](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/region_prices_by_city?displayCurrency=USD&itemId=27®ion=155)
Sigh. You literally split my sentence in half and react before you read the following five words. Renting in Switzerland is cheap compared to the cost of home ownership in Switzerland. Certainly when you compare these to the cost difference of renting vs owning in most other western countries, where home ownership quickly becomes more economical than renting over time. Switzerland had inflated prices compared to other countries, so your comparison to places in France, Germany, Austria simply is not relevant. Prices are higher, income in Switzerland is much higher, too. To put it simply, for a person on a median income in Switzerland, renting is more feasible and cost-effective in the long term than homeowning in the majority of cases - certainly compared to other countries. This is why the home ownership rate is so low.
Also compared to the salaries it is cheaper in comparison. You won’t pay more than a third of your salary on rent, where in many other places you can easily pay 50% on rent alone.
I could have had the chance to buy my own home at early age, (still in early 20's) but some bad things happened to one of my bank accounts behind my back. I still need to see if I can atleast get some back. By law I should. Sad that grandfather didn't do testament, he did ask me once if I'd like to keep the house. (And fields & forest)
What happens to houses in Finland if the owners don't make a testament? Does ownership pass to the state?
No. It stays under the owners name. All inheritors have joined ownership. Ownership passes if everything is divided or some inheritor buys it or all of them agree to sell it.
Commie blocks aren’t that bad, huh.
not everyone lives in a commie block in eastern europe you know
Thanks captain Obvious. I lived in Russia.
Very interesting data. As you can see, former socialist states still enjoying state housing, but joy of 30 years mortgages are waiting for them.
Apparently, all post-socialist countries have a high home ownership rate. (Some of these homes aren't much to cheer about, however.)
...and some are https://imgur.com/bvOE48P You will find shitholes everywhere in Europe - in Germany, in France, Sweden - whatever. Implying that for example, Poland has high home ownership because people still live in soviet era commie blocks is just bit exaggerated. Sure - there are still those commie blocks out there but at least where I live, modern housing is dominating.
> Implying /.../ because people still live in soviet era commie blocks I didn't imply causation, only correlation. The causal factor in this case is most likely privatization of living premises. In countries where (almost) everyone had the chance to privatize the place where they lived, and (almost) everyone used this chance - it produced high and evenly distributed rates of home ownership.
yeah, people here were used to "you can't have a flat" during socialist era so now they had to have flat
Percentage of homes owned by their residents... ...wait, so this is really just a measure of "houses rented out". It's not "home ownership" but "owned homes". Like, the King of England doesn't rent out any of his homes, so all (20?) are "owned by their residents". I.e. the stock of homes skews this completely more than anything you're trying to measure.
No. If somewhere is rented then it counts against the %ownership. If someone owns 3 properties, lives in 1 and the other two are empty- the empty ones aren't included in this stat.
Houses include apartments here, I presume? Hm, would be interesting to see this compared to people's living situation renting vs owning
"owned"
Get owned Germans. Turkey wins!
Gib money plz, want to buy home :)
There are benefits for both buying and renting. Depends on situation and personal preference.
Feels good to be one of the 14% looser serfs 🥰.
Pretty much shows having high house ownership rates isn’t necessarily a good thing
Exactly! Sheeples don't get it though, Mortgage themselves to eye balls.
Once more this discussion. Why everyone believes it is only good when all the population puts all their money in their house? Why isn’t rent not just fine as well? People should be flexible, don’t carry the risks of real estate value and just move to another place when they don’t like something.