Americans are all-too-familiar with issues in the US housing market: fluctuations in housing prices, along with problems of affordability and even homelessness. I’m not sure whether it is consoling or confounding to observe that similar problems exist across the European Union, but The State of Housing in the EU 2017, just published by Housing Europe, which is a federation of 45 national and regional housing-related organizationsthat in turn represent about “43.000 public, social and cooperative housing providers in 24 countries.” Here are a few commentsof the report:

Overall, the homeownership rate in the EU is similar to the United States. But one ironical pattern is that the countries with the highest homeownership rates tend to be the formerly Communist states that were part of the Soviet Union, because people in those countries were able to receive ownership of the homes in which they had been living for a low price. The report explains: 

“The most common tenure in Europe is owner occupation, with an average 69.4% of the population living in owner-occupied housing against 30.6% tenants. However, this masks wide variations in tenure distribution across countries. Most former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe show a very high share of home-owners without mortgage, as after the fall of the communist regimes tenants were offered to buy the dwellings in which they lived at a low price. In Southern European countries outright ownership rates are also high. In most English-speaking and Nordic countries, Belgium and the Netherlands owners with outstanding mortgages are the most common tenure type. Only in Switzerland and Germany renting is more common than owning …”