Romania, the EU champion of the total population that owns the homes in which it lives

By Andra Beltz
Over 96% of Romania’s population lived in a privately owned home in 2020, the highest percentage among European Union member states, Eurostat statistics show on Thursday, according to the national news agency Agerpres.
At the level of the European Union, 69.7% of the inhabitants owned, in 2020, the house in which they lived, a slight decrease compared to 69.8% in 2019. In Romania the trend is reversed, the percentage of those living in the house personally owned by increased from 95.8% to 96.1%.
Other countries with a high degree of home ownership are Slovakia (92%), Hungary and Croatia (both with 91%).
Eurostat points out that in most countries, with the exception of Germany, the percentage of those who own a home is higher than that of tenants. In Germany, half (50.4%) of the inhabitants own the houses in which they live while the other half (49.6%) live in a rented house. However, the data show that in the case of Germany the percentage of landlords decreases from one year to another, from 51.1% in 2019 to 50.4% in 2020, while the percentage of tenants increases, from 48.9% to 49 , 6%.
Other countries where the percentage of homeowners is low are Austria (55%) and Denmark (59%).
Eurostat data also show that, at EU level, 53% of the population lives in a house and 46% in an apartment, while the remaining 1% live in another type of space such as a house on rivers, caravans, etc. Ireland, with 92%, is the country with the highest percentage of people living in a house, at the opposite pole being Spain where 66% of the people live in an apartment.
In Romania, 65.9% of the inhabitants live at home and 34.1% live in an apartment. But Romania ranks last in the EU when it comes to housing size, measured by the average number of rooms per person. While in the EU the average is 1.6 rooms for one person, in Romania it is 1.1 rooms for one person. The best in this respect are Malta with 2.3 rooms per person, followed by Belgium and Ireland, both with 2.1 rooms per person.
Also, the quality of housing, which can be measured in several ways including the percentage of the population living in a crowded house, Romania is the country with the highest rate of congestion (45.1%), while at EU level more at least 18% of the population lived in a crowded home in 2020, down from 19.1% in 2010.