Are homes more affordable in Europe?

34 comments

1. Not really as we have exactly the same problems as every other developed country. High paying jobs are located in cities and as a result prices have massively increased.

   I don’t know anyone in Europe who thinks it’s easy for young (<40) people to buy a house and this is backed up by the increasing number of people living at home.

2. Living space in the major cities is sparse and expensive. Or at least becoming more expensive in those it isn’t. Luckily, our jobs aren’t that focused on the big cities and you usually always have the option to work and live somewhere more rural.

   The last time the german population has declined was 2 years around 2010.

3. France has TONS of immigrants 😂😂😂

   Just go checks data (germany has much more, UK too, Spain too, equality with Italy)

   The only thing we have is maybe a worse integration to the society of some immigrants

4. Homes are a lot more affordable in the USA than in countries like the Netherlands. In some parts of Eastern Europe or the Mediterranean, though, I have heard things can be a lot more reasonable.

5. I think Norway is slightly but not much more expensive in terms of home affordability than the US (regional variation between countries counts for a lot here, so its more of a general statement). Interest rates are a bit lower but bigger cities have a higher cost per m2 and I do feel like building quality is much higher in Norway. So overall cost is comparable in relation to salary/price.

6. It depends on the country and policies. In some countries most people rent, in other countries most people buy.

7. >declining population for years

   You know one person can own more than one property right? No, homes are absolutely not more affordable in Europe for the local population. They get pushed out by corporations hoarding housing or foreigners moving there because with their foreign income it’s “cheap”.

8. We have the same neoliberal policies in europe that have changed housing from a right to a commodity. In my country, german pension funds buy up much of the new developments so people don’t even get a chance to buy their own home.

   And then people wonder why euroscepticism and far right ideologies are on the rise

9. Depends on the country and city. Overall, even in the more affordable places home prices are still decoupled from people’s earnings to some degree. This is a complex issue, with many causes. Environmental regulations, building materials cost, lack of new urbanizations, nimby-ism etc. It won’t be fixed any time soon as there is no political will for it anywhere, because there’s a ton of opposition, both from homeowners and from environmental activists.

10. The issue is similar, but as always, in the US the issue is on steroids

11. You’re making a lot of strange assumptions here. Like, Germany has no immigrants? Lolwut. It’s population is slowly shrinking (or maybe plateauing), but it’s not as severe as say Italy, Spain or Russia.

    As with everything, location location location.

    As part of urbanization, yes, homes in desirable cities are more expensive. Many national economies had the same bright idea to promote home-building and home ownership as a source of wealth creation. The problem is, homes *should* be primarily places to live in. The countries that sunk into this idea more than others are those where home prices are, *surprise!,* generally more unaffordable. Why? It’s promoted rich individuals *and* companies to buy up housing, so they can park their wealth in it (and rent them back for profit). In countries that allow it (most do), it’s also promoted absentee foreign ownership of housing. If you’re ‘rich’ and live in a despotic country where the government can seize you or your assets at any time, then parking your ‘extra’ wealth in property in safe Western countries is a pretty good idea. Hence all the Russian, Azeri, Central Asian, Chinese, Iranian, Saudi and Emerati and other oligarchs and government types that do this. This is worse in big/capital cities. The states become dependent on this cash flow (taxes), even as it chokes out locals from their own ‘markets’.

    As for Germany, I can say that, IME, yes, homes are expensive. First of all, about half of people rent for life, as renters have strong rights, and landlords cannot act arbitrarily to evict or increase rent beyond a reasonable limit. Thus, historically there was no great ‘mania’ to own a home to prove something (*the Middle Class Dream™)*, as there was in other places. This is changing, however, as people see homes as investments for the future. But still, yes, there is housing pressure.

    Now, if you live in any kind of desirable city, and you’re not well above the average income, then buying a home is not going to be that easy. Sure, you can often find *something.* But where we live for example, you’re either limited to two main options. Small, compact new homes, often row houses or multiplexes, which are almost always tightly packed next to each other. No ‘garden’ spaces (a few metre strip of grass), and within a few metres of the neighbours of the next tightly packed small new build. Sardine cans, basically. Good luck finding anything over 100-110q.m. The other option are houses belonging to elderly people who have recently moved on. Forget the cosmetics like brown and orange tiles and carpets everywhere. These homes were often built before the 1960s and often haven’t had any significant updates or renovation since (just small patchwork fixes as necessary). They are not always necessarily that large either. I’ve seen many on the market that have similar or *less* actual living space than the half-house we rent now. Either way, you’ll inevitably need to sink another 50-100k € (or more?!) in renovations and upgrades for energy efficiency, heating, etc. Again, I see *a lot* of houses like this on the market. Often they do have reasonably large footprints (gardens), but then as often as not, they are bought up by development companies who tear them down and build 2-3 sardine can complexes on the same space.

    I think it’s clear I see this as rather ho-hum negative.

    Now if you want to live in a tiny dying village where only old people remain and there’s no jobs, few if any shops, and few if any busses let alone trains, and maybe you need 60+ minutes to drive to the nearest big city (even further away for Germany’s top 5 or so biggest cities) , sure, you can often find something affordable. Upgrades notwithstanding.

12. Naw. Europe has a much higher population density throughout, esp in the richer nations, and housing prices do reflect that. As far as I know it’s more expensive, on average, than the US. The US only leads in a few high end locations like SF, Seattle or NYC.

13. In and around the larger homes are very expensive. Out in the countryside they can be fairly “cheap”, but on the other hand it’ll be a lot harder to find a job nearby and you’ll likely need to commute. High-paying jobs are pretty much only found in the cities, but if you’re lucky you might find one that allows remote so you can work from home.

14. Absolutely not.

    I don’t think any European country has had a declining population. And in some countries (Ireland, the Netherlands) there is a big housing crisis.

15. Not here in the Netherlands. There are places in Europe where homes are a lot cheaper than here, but I think they’re on par with homes in your less popular states. 

16. *Homes* were always kinda expensive here, now they are definitely unaffordable to most. That was never a big issue, because long-term renting is safe and common in Germany, landlords can’t just kick you out on a whim. There is no cultural expectation to buy a house. However, renting also used to be relatively cheap compared to countries with a similar standard of living (just like the general cost of living), which is increasingly not the case anymore.

    > I’m pretty sure France has TONS of immigrants but Germany has had a declining population for years.

    Actually no, it’s increasing. As of 2023, Germanys foreign-born population was 20%. Compare that to 14% in the US and 10% in France (2021).

17. In Germany, definitly not.

    Traditionally buying has always been a once-in-a-lifetime event for us. Not like the US, who apparently seem to have some sort of “housing ladder”? But currently buying a decent home, that isn’t totally in the middle of nowhere is incredible expensive.

    >Germany has had a declining population for years.

    We haven’t. Total numbers of residents has even risen. But most immigrants aren’t pressure on the buying market, but further increase the housing crisis in the rental market.

18. Depending where in Europe. On the Loire Valley, a house with a yard and all can cost the same as a studio in mid-london. It all about location, location, location.

19. >I’m pretty sure France has TONS of immigrants but Germany has had a declining population for years.

    You should be less sure about stuff.

20. Here’s an odd difference I’ve found being raised on both sides of the pond. Europeans on general tend to inherit properties more while Americans tend to sell off a home and split the money among family. I’ve got no data to prove this. But Europeans on general kind of hoard their properties. For instance my sil owns two cottages, and three apartments. These would be valued over two million dollars. But she lives in one and rents the other two, and has a very modest life. This isn’t uncommon either. For whatever reason I’ve noticed Europeans just don’t sell their properties off when they inherit it. So yes. Prices are insane (around half a million for a two bedroom apartment) but most everyone also inherits something.

21. No.

    Here in Ireland you often get low quality, low variety and high prices for houses. Exacerbating this is the fact umyou can only get a mortgage that’s 4 times your gross salary and need a minimum 10% deposit. So many are priced out if the market. A slight relaxation of those rules in 2023 only pushed up prices further.

    Dublin regularly rivals New York for rent unaffordability and the rest of the country isn’t much better. It’s not unheard of to hear about 1000 people viewing one available room (not even full apartment) for rent. Planners have been incredibly averse to building housing over two stories since some bad experiences from the 60s with what few high rises were built then. So there’s low supply and low variety here too.

    Employment wise, wages are lower than the US, but employee protections are **far** better. This is true in pretty much all of Europe. In Ireland, there are plenty of social safety nets, some of them can be seen as too generous at times.

22. Rent and house prices have increased since Covid and the war in the Ukraine. Everything has increased, and so did our wages tbh.

    I mean, I live in my apartment for a year, and the rent has increased by 100€, which is bonkers. Some people in my complex moved out because it became too expensive for them. In my city, the rent for 50m² is around 600-800€ per month (minimum)

    That being said, it hugely depends on where you live. If you live in the countryside, the rent is far less.
    Can’t say much about the house building volk or those buying houses, except that it feels like it decreased drastically due to lot and house prices

23. No. If anything, they’re less affordable. Sure, if you come to Portugal from California with a California salary you’ll probably find them cheap (which is one of the many reasons they are expensive for us) but rents in the big cities are higher than the average salary. Minimum wage can’t even pay for a rented room.

24. > The price of homes in the US (and I hear Canada as well) are very high.

    From my German perspective, Homes in the US and Canada are cheap as hell…

25. Eastern Europe and Romania especially is doing well. 

    Communist legacy means everyone in the older generation is a homeowner with no mortgage. Massive construction activity allowed by very laxed planning permissions has kept prices low in the cities.

    Average price for a new build in Bucharest is around 2000 eurs/sqm, average salary is 1200 with many earning more or much more up to Western standards (IT people, doctors, lawyers,  tradespeople etc), so many young people have bought and are still buying, many buying multiple properties to rent out. City centre new builds would be considerably more expensive than the old ones, going to 3000+ euros/sqm.

    Land is much cheaper as well compared to Western Europe and all these together with the very low crime index of urban and rural Romania have contributed to an influx of foreigners, mostly Germans and British buying properties too, either investment ones in major cities or houses on land in the countryside. 

26. *are homes more affordable in europe*

    an average home in NL is 10x the average salary , not sure if you can call that affordable
    and with a 400k house shortage on a 18M population there is no end in sight

    rental markets are crazy as well where people are actually overbidding each other to please pay more rent than the asking price so that they have a place to stay / live

27. I don’t think it’s really comparable. The most expensive places in the US are more expensive than Europe, but the cheapest places in the US are also cheaper than anything in (at least Western) Europe.

    There’s a lot of nowhere in the US where housing is dirt cheap, but for a good reason – those often aren’t places that have basic services like grocery stores, schools, or healthcare, running water, or paved roads in the local area. Or the quality of such basic services is so bad they’re effectively unusable.

    Europe has a higher population density which means places aren’t left that undeveloped like they can be in the US, and that means there’s higher competition for housing everywhere, and all housing has basic services. 

    European governments also put a lot more effort into ensuring housing is affordable, with things rent controls and subsidies. You don’t have housing markets in Europe like you do in the US, where people working for minimum wage are left homeless.

28. Prices in central London are falling and have fallen since COVID.

    I cannot speak for elsewhere.

    So yes if you make your country unattractive to foreign investment, your properties unliveable due to shoddy construction and draconian feudal legal arrangements that can bankrupt the buyer … then prices will fall

    It isn’t a good thing. Enjoy your rising prices!

29. In Poland: your net income is about 60k, house near bigger town is about 750-1100k for 120sq m. You need 20% of that in cash. After that you need pay your debt and try to live. Apartaments are close to 9k/ sq m.

30. It depends on where in the country, and the exchange rate when comparing to other countries.

31. I think it scales. Like I’m from Czech Republic. Sure it might be cheaper than say Switzerland, France, Sweden or Norway etc, but income is also lower.

    I have a friend who moved and worked in England. She was paid like £12/h working retail in London but London is so expensive.

32. Is there some metric that takes into account average income, average costs, and average home price (by size), by country. Also possibly owning vs renting and urban vs rural. This would be a fair comparison.

33. A middle class household with 2 working people can definately afford a house.

    But as for raw numbers:

    Building your own house: average cost 250 000-280 000 euros. And by building i naturally mean paying someone to build it for you.

    Out of the 300 or so municipalities, some 100 have houses at below 100 000€ on average.

    In Helsinki, a house will cost on average, roughly 500 000€.

    For renting an apartment, the average nationwide cost is roughly 13€/square meter. So a studio aparment of 35 square meters would cost 455€ a month. In Helsinki, it would be around 700-800€.

    So in conclusion, anyone with a full time job can afford an apartment, and most can one day afford a full house. In big cities, a full house isn’t really possible to own alone, or even with a partner if you don’t make a lot of money.

    I’d also like to add that the government will give you enough money basic necessities if you need the help. Truly homeless people are not a thing in Finland.

34. N. O. Prague is the second least affordable major city in Europe behind I think Budapest, especially home-wise. There is a massive inflated market bubble. My dad easily makes top 10%, my mom makes a little above minimum wage. Today they wouldn’t be able to get a mortgage on the tiny apartment we have. They got the mortgage in 2003. They simply wouldn’t be given a mortgage because they don’t make enough.