How difficult is it to afford to buy a home where you live?
July 14, 2025
How difficult is it to afford to buy a home where you live?
28 comments
Acoording to websites i am in top 10% earners in Austria, but if I would want to buy a house in my area, it’s around 600.000 EUR, so I would need a 150.000 down payment plus a 2000 eur or so rate, that means its impossible.
Not as bad as places in the Republic of Ireland or Britain but still pretty difficult.
Housing stock is limited, a lot of it in poor condition and prices have shot up since Covid. Also Covid and remote working increased the number of people on Dublin and London wages buying here. They can get so much more for their money but it’s pushing prices up to unattainable levels for locals who typically have lower salaries.
My pay is 920 euro, average house costs about 400k.
Yeeeaaaah it’s rough, unless you have a better than average upbringing finance-wise to strongly back you or get some 1 in 10,000 job where you earn a lot at a young age or get some really good inheritence, you need a mortgage unless you wanna buy it with savings at the age of 45.
It’s bordering on lunacy at this stage. Bought my home 5 years ago and I thought I overpaid to be honest but elderly neighbour 3 doors down passed away and the family just sold that house (needs a ton of work) for €90k more than I paid for mine. €90k in 5 years in a standard working class area
It is completely impossible to buy a flat on an average salary. The price per square metre is around 6-8k euros. 1m² of building land costs approximately 1-2k euros.
In Norway they have something called the “nurse-index”. It tells how many of the appartments in norway (or specific city) you would be able to by with a salary as a nurse. In the table in [this article](https://www.nrk.no/stor-oslo/sykepleierindeksen-2024_-vanskelig-a-kjope-seg-bolig-med-sykepleierlonn_-men-det-finnes-rad-1.17215719) you can see the statistics for the different part of the country. In the capital you would be able to buy 2,3% of the appartmens.. about the same in the nearby areas.. A bit farther away you will be more like able to buy 20-30 of the appartments with a salary as a nurse. Typically places like Sarpsborg, Fredrikstad, Drammen etc (the cities that are in size the next after the 3 big ones..
So indeed it’s affordable in many cases if your willing to live some distance fro your job.. Typically prices drops in the areas with less jobs etc. Nowadays where many have possibility for working from home offices it is probably not that bad.. and many people also have jobs that are better paid than nurses.. and if you’re 2 persons.. etc.. many also get helps from parents etc.
Though norwegian media love to make cases with young people not being able to buy appartments in the hippest district of the city = crisis. Like their finances shouldn’t guide them in what should by..
🇨🇭
Impossible, basically. Even if you’re in the bracket of the top 5% earners, you’ll better forget about buying a house. At least if you want it somewhere, where there’s infrastructure.
The only way to get a house is to be born to rich parents. Or to win the lottery.
Unless you’re rich or you have parents who are willing to chip in with a significant amount, it’s very difficult in large parts of the country
Impossible. I make 2500€ a month, which is about 600€ above average.
The average flat is about 260 000€, and I don’t even live in a major city.
Pretty reasonable. You can get a 2 bedroom house for around £160,000 in my town.
11/10 atleast:) & best if u have generational wealth, connections ( some homes are word of mouth, not in adverts),& there isn’t alot if u want a specific location/street/area.
edit. infuriating also that to get listed/vintage homes land, owners will just also let a nice old home literally rot til it falls down. it means nice homes stand empty, that could have a family or students owning it & making villages more local ( with locals, not investors)
Spain
20% Down payment
10% Tax
2% Other expenses
For a 200k home you need to save 64K which is not exactly easy to do in Spain without help
Here in Sweden it depends where you want to live. In Stockholm it’s extremely hard unless two high income earners have been able to save a lot of money. In smaller cities it’s possible but getting harder and harder. Average wage is about 3,600 euros per month prior to taxes outside of the capital (about 2,700) post taxes and an average home is about 300,000 euros I’d say and you need 45 k cash.
Germany (Berlin) you need around 20% down payment + notary cost (15-30k) and any renovation comes form your pocket not the mortgage. Monthly payment would be around 2.5-3k monthly.
Apartments within the ringbahn (public transportation) with 3 bedrooms: 500-900k
Townhouses with the same description as above around: 750k to 1.5million.
brandenburg is cheaper but not that much cheaper anymore since a lot of people can’t buy in Berlin they started buying in Brandenburg. 😅😅
Fun times! 😅😅
Not expensive to buy a house in some parts of my city
Because you don’t want to live in those parts
Not really difficult compared to most of developed nations at this point.
🇪🇸 House prices have risen by an average of 70% in the last 10 years, although there are some cities where they have risen by more than 120%. Wages have risen by just 20% (on average).
Ipsos made a very interesting study that says that 66% of Spanish homeowners today would not be able to buy the same house. So you can imagine that things are fucked.
Now, there are *a lot* of very cheap houses in unpopulated Spain, for well under 100.000€ (need reform), but of course you have to live where nobody wants to live, villages where there are only grandparents, a priest and the owner of the village bar, who will probably also be the mayor.
There are so many that there are even village platforms that advertise to try to attract new residents and give benefits to those who decide to buy or rent there.
Lmao the housing market in Stockholm is ridiculously easy, to rent something you only have to queue for twenty years or pay a hefty markup.
To buy something decent make sure your dad worked as an investment banker.
A small 2 br townhouse in a Kyiv suburb costs $100k.
To even start thinking about mortgage you need to have $40k saved up.
The median monthly wage in Kyiv is $720.
Make of that what you want.
Depends on your standards.
A) It’s more common in Austria to build your own house here than to buy one. Also, the land you build on can be a significant portion of the cost.
Land prices vary greatly depending on the distance to the nearest city. So if you want to be close to Vienna, land is nearly unaffordable. If you are an hour away from it in a small town land can actually be very cheap.
Houses are still being built everywhere I look so it’s still possible BUT most lots and houses are significantly smaller these days than 30 or 40 years ago (when my parents built a house). When maybe 1200-1500 m2 was standard back in the 70s and 80s, today it’s closer to 600-800.
My parents’ house was quite big with a basement. Most houses I see buing build by middle class families today are much smaller, don’t have basements and just a flat roof. It seems like people are building as simply as possible to save costs everywhere they can.
B) if you can’t afford to build a new home buying an old house is an option and IME it’s quite popular now. I live in a neighborhood of a small town where houses were built in the 1950s. Maybe 30 years ago these houses would have been torn down to build a new bigger house. Today, I see lots of them being renovated from the ground up. People try to do as much of the work as possible themselves and/or with the help of friends. It usually takes new windows, new insulation, new wiring and whatnot BUT you still safe on building material.
TLDR: Yes, people keep complaining about exploding costs for building a house but with smaller houses, fixer-uppers (and often life-long loan payments) it’s still possible for middle class or even working class families to eventually own a home. (Eastern Austria)
Average house is 450k here, probably more if you want it in a decent area.
Average wage is probably 46500 euros, which you can get a mortgage of 200k with. So you see that even with a partner making the same you are not buying a house without having significant savings already. Its a disaster.
In Vilnius, average salary after taxes in Q1 2025 was 1732€. A modest one bedroom apartment would be around 110-120k in a new development or 90-100k in a Soviet commie block. You would need to save 15% downpayment (since next year it will be 10% for your first apartment). But banks require bigger downpayment for old apartments.
Then a typical monthly payment would be around 400-500€ with the current Euribor, potentially getting lower as Euribor decreases. No one takes fixed interest loans here.
I think it’s not too bad compared to many places in Europe but affordability has become lower recently. It was much better. The central bank is therefore introducing the requirement for all second and third real estate to have a minimum downpayment of 30% and lowering it to 10% for first real estate, as mentioned.
Live in the suburbs of Helsinki. Gave a 30% downpayment of 130k€ for a 59m2 flat built in the 1950s. Piping and renovation done 10 years ago. On the other spectrum my friend bought a 95m2 apartment for 450k€ on the otherside of Helsinki.
Buying a „ready to move in” house is impossible. If you are a lucky person, who have a building plot, it could be hard, but not impossible to build by your hands. We (me and my almost husband) are planning to build our house, so we calculated it will cost us about 80-120k EUR (without costs of plot) to building a house to the closed shell state. But we decided to build almost everything is done by our own hands.
Apart from desirable locations in Helsinki, not very hard in Finland.
It’s unaffordable. Even renting it becomes more and more impossible here in Berlin, Germany.
Well I’m unable to work and own my apartment so… all it cost me was my health and most of my mental health.
28 comments
Acoording to websites i am in top 10% earners in Austria, but if I would want to buy a house in my area, it’s around 600.000 EUR, so I would need a 150.000 down payment plus a 2000 eur or so rate, that means its impossible.
Not as bad as places in the Republic of Ireland or Britain but still pretty difficult.
Housing stock is limited, a lot of it in poor condition and prices have shot up since Covid. Also Covid and remote working increased the number of people on Dublin and London wages buying here. They can get so much more for their money but it’s pushing prices up to unattainable levels for locals who typically have lower salaries.
My pay is 920 euro, average house costs about 400k.
Yeeeaaaah it’s rough, unless you have a better than average upbringing finance-wise to strongly back you or get some 1 in 10,000 job where you earn a lot at a young age or get some really good inheritence, you need a mortgage unless you wanna buy it with savings at the age of 45.
It’s bordering on lunacy at this stage. Bought my home 5 years ago and I thought I overpaid to be honest but elderly neighbour 3 doors down passed away and the family just sold that house (needs a ton of work) for €90k more than I paid for mine. €90k in 5 years in a standard working class area
It is completely impossible to buy a flat on an average salary. The price per square metre is around 6-8k euros. 1m² of building land costs approximately 1-2k euros.
In Norway they have something called the “nurse-index”. It tells how many of the appartments in norway (or specific city) you would be able to by with a salary as a nurse. In the table in [this article](https://www.nrk.no/stor-oslo/sykepleierindeksen-2024_-vanskelig-a-kjope-seg-bolig-med-sykepleierlonn_-men-det-finnes-rad-1.17215719) you can see the statistics for the different part of the country. In the capital you would be able to buy 2,3% of the appartmens.. about the same in the nearby areas.. A bit farther away you will be more like able to buy 20-30 of the appartments with a salary as a nurse. Typically places like Sarpsborg, Fredrikstad, Drammen etc (the cities that are in size the next after the 3 big ones..
So indeed it’s affordable in many cases if your willing to live some distance fro your job.. Typically prices drops in the areas with less jobs etc. Nowadays where many have possibility for working from home offices it is probably not that bad.. and many people also have jobs that are better paid than nurses.. and if you’re 2 persons.. etc.. many also get helps from parents etc.
Though norwegian media love to make cases with young people not being able to buy appartments in the hippest district of the city = crisis. Like their finances shouldn’t guide them in what should by..
🇨🇭
Impossible, basically. Even if you’re in the bracket of the top 5% earners, you’ll better forget about buying a house. At least if you want it somewhere, where there’s infrastructure.
The only way to get a house is to be born to rich parents. Or to win the lottery.
Update:
See eg. https://www.reddit.com/r/Switzerland/s/ZusC1mk4ez for more.
Unless you’re rich or you have parents who are willing to chip in with a significant amount, it’s very difficult in large parts of the country
Impossible. I make 2500€ a month, which is about 600€ above average.
The average flat is about 260 000€, and I don’t even live in a major city.
Pretty reasonable. You can get a 2 bedroom house for around £160,000 in my town.
11/10 atleast:) & best if u have generational wealth, connections ( some homes are word of mouth, not in adverts),& there isn’t alot if u want a specific location/street/area.
edit. infuriating also that to get listed/vintage homes land, owners will just also let a nice old home literally rot til it falls down. it means nice homes stand empty, that could have a family or students owning it & making villages more local ( with locals, not investors)
Spain
20% Down payment
10% Tax
2% Other expenses
For a 200k home you need to save 64K which is not exactly easy to do in Spain without help
Here in Sweden it depends where you want to live. In Stockholm it’s extremely hard unless two high income earners have been able to save a lot of money. In smaller cities it’s possible but getting harder and harder. Average wage is about 3,600 euros per month prior to taxes outside of the capital (about 2,700) post taxes and an average home is about 300,000 euros I’d say and you need 45 k cash.
Germany (Berlin) you need around 20% down payment + notary cost (15-30k) and any renovation comes form your pocket not the mortgage. Monthly payment would be around 2.5-3k monthly.
Apartments within the ringbahn (public transportation) with 3 bedrooms: 500-900k
Townhouses with the same description as above around: 750k to 1.5million.
brandenburg is cheaper but not that much cheaper anymore since a lot of people can’t buy in Berlin they started buying in Brandenburg. 😅😅
Fun times! 😅😅
Not expensive to buy a house in some parts of my city
Because you don’t want to live in those parts
Not really difficult compared to most of developed nations at this point.
🇪🇸 House prices have risen by an average of 70% in the last 10 years, although there are some cities where they have risen by more than 120%. Wages have risen by just 20% (on average).
Ipsos made a very interesting study that says that 66% of Spanish homeowners today would not be able to buy the same house. So you can imagine that things are fucked.
Now, there are *a lot* of very cheap houses in unpopulated Spain, for well under 100.000€ (need reform), but of course you have to live where nobody wants to live, villages where there are only grandparents, a priest and the owner of the village bar, who will probably also be the mayor.
There are so many that there are even village platforms that advertise to try to attract new residents and give benefits to those who decide to buy or rent there.
Lmao the housing market in Stockholm is ridiculously easy, to rent something you only have to queue for twenty years or pay a hefty markup.
To buy something decent make sure your dad worked as an investment banker.
A small 2 br townhouse in a Kyiv suburb costs $100k.
To even start thinking about mortgage you need to have $40k saved up.
The median monthly wage in Kyiv is $720.
Make of that what you want.
Depends on your standards.
A) It’s more common in Austria to build your own house here than to buy one. Also, the land you build on can be a significant portion of the cost.
Land prices vary greatly depending on the distance to the nearest city. So if you want to be close to Vienna, land is nearly unaffordable. If you are an hour away from it in a small town land can actually be very cheap.
Houses are still being built everywhere I look so it’s still possible BUT most lots and houses are significantly smaller these days than 30 or 40 years ago (when my parents built a house). When maybe 1200-1500 m2 was standard back in the 70s and 80s, today it’s closer to 600-800.
My parents’ house was quite big with a basement. Most houses I see buing build by middle class families today are much smaller, don’t have basements and just a flat roof. It seems like people are building as simply as possible to save costs everywhere they can.
B) if you can’t afford to build a new home buying an old house is an option and IME it’s quite popular now. I live in a neighborhood of a small town where houses were built in the 1950s. Maybe 30 years ago these houses would have been torn down to build a new bigger house. Today, I see lots of them being renovated from the ground up. People try to do as much of the work as possible themselves and/or with the help of friends. It usually takes new windows, new insulation, new wiring and whatnot BUT you still safe on building material.
TLDR: Yes, people keep complaining about exploding costs for building a house but with smaller houses, fixer-uppers (and often life-long loan payments) it’s still possible for middle class or even working class families to eventually own a home. (Eastern Austria)
Average house is 450k here, probably more if you want it in a decent area.
Average wage is probably 46500 euros, which you can get a mortgage of 200k with. So you see that even with a partner making the same you are not buying a house without having significant savings already. Its a disaster.
In Vilnius, average salary after taxes in Q1 2025 was 1732€. A modest one bedroom apartment would be around 110-120k in a new development or 90-100k in a Soviet commie block. You would need to save 15% downpayment (since next year it will be 10% for your first apartment). But banks require bigger downpayment for old apartments.
Then a typical monthly payment would be around 400-500€ with the current Euribor, potentially getting lower as Euribor decreases. No one takes fixed interest loans here.
I think it’s not too bad compared to many places in Europe but affordability has become lower recently. It was much better. The central bank is therefore introducing the requirement for all second and third real estate to have a minimum downpayment of 30% and lowering it to 10% for first real estate, as mentioned.
Live in the suburbs of Helsinki. Gave a 30% downpayment of 130k€ for a 59m2 flat built in the 1950s. Piping and renovation done 10 years ago. On the other spectrum my friend bought a 95m2 apartment for 450k€ on the otherside of Helsinki.
Buying a „ready to move in” house is impossible. If you are a lucky person, who have a building plot, it could be hard, but not impossible to build by your hands. We (me and my almost husband) are planning to build our house, so we calculated it will cost us about 80-120k EUR (without costs of plot) to building a house to the closed shell state. But we decided to build almost everything is done by our own hands.
Apart from desirable locations in Helsinki, not very hard in Finland.
It’s unaffordable. Even renting it becomes more and more impossible here in Berlin, Germany.
Well I’m unable to work and own my apartment so… all it cost me was my health and most of my mental health.