Phoenix 24
Ownership is slipping further from younger generations.
Brussels
Europe’s housing crisis is increasingly exposing a generational divide in access to home ownership. OECD data cited by Euronews show that younger Europeans are reaching the same stages of adulthood with lower ownership rates than earlier generations. Among people born around 1975, 60 percent owned a home by age 32, compared with 58 percent for those born in 1980 and 52 percent for the 1985 cohort. The pattern suggests that the difficulty is not simply temporary affordability pressure, but a structural shift in who can accumulate housing wealth and when.
The decline becomes even clearer at younger ages. At 29, home ownership stood at 52 percent for people born in 1980, falling to 45 percent for those born in 1985 and 41 percent for the 1990 cohort. At 23, the difference was also visible, with 32 percent of the 1985 cohort owning a home compared with 26 percent among those born in 1990. By contrast, older generations generally reached middle age with ownership rates around or above 68 percent.
Several forces are converging behind the decline. Higher interest rates since 2021 have raised mortgage costs, while housing prices in many OECD countries have grown faster than incomes. Slower wage growth has made it harder for first time buyers to build deposits and qualify for mortgages, while longer periods in higher education may also delay entry into stable employment and independent living. The result is a market in which the distance between earnings and housing values has widened faster than many younger households can compensate for.
Country level comparisons reinforce the structural nature of the problem. Among people in their thirties, Ireland saw home ownership fall from 81 percent in the mid 1990s to 53 percent in the most recent period measured. Greece declined from 78 percent to 58 percent, while the United Kingdom fell from 74 percent to 56 percent and Spain from 77 percent to 60 percent. Denmark, Austria, Luxembourg, Germany and Switzerland also recorded notable declines.
Not every country followed the same path. Slovakia, Czechia and Poland recorded large increases linked in part to post socialist privatization, when residents were able to acquire previously state owned housing at very low prices. Those cases show how strongly ownership patterns can be shaped by institutional history rather than by market forces alone.
Europe’s housing problem is therefore becoming more than a question of prices. It is increasingly a question of whether younger generations can convert work, income and savings into long term economic security at the same pace as those before them.
Contra la propaganda, memoria. / Against propaganda, memory.