Where Data Tells the Story
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19 of 29 European countries now have fewer homeowners than a decade ago. Malta lost 1 in 10 owners in a decade, while Italy and Serbia bucked the trend.
Most housing headlines are about price. This one is about something deeper: who actually owns the walls around them.
Eurostat just confirmed what the data has been whispering for years:
Malta has shed 10.5 percentage points of homeownership since 2016, the steepest drop in Europe. Luxembourg lost nearly 10pp as housing costs priced out buyers.
But the story isn't uniformly grim.
Italy gained 4.8pp, Southern Europe's quiet outlier. Serbia leads all gainers at +6.5pp. Slovakia and Poland are building an ownership culture while the West retreats from one.
The pattern that emerges is striking: Western and Northern Europe is renting. Eastern Europe is buying.
At the current trajectory, homeownership stops being the European default sometime this decade.
👉 Read the deep dive: https://www.vizmaya.fyi/story/housing-trends-europe