In the European Union (EU), 70% of the population lives in their own homes and 24.7% of households in the Union have mortgages at 45.3% of those without mortgages. This shows data from Eurostat and the Housing Finance Information Network.

The difference between Eastern and Western European countries is drastic. In eastern and south-eastern Europe the share of the population with mortgages is below the EU average. In this respect, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia rank first, with less than 10 per cent of the people in the three countries having their own home without having borrowed a mortgage for their purchase.

Our northern neighbor is also the country where most households live in their own property - nearly 97 per cent. In Croatia, this refers to 90.5 per cent of people, and in Bulgaria to 82.1 per cent. In Poland, the percentage of households with a mortgage reaches 11.1 per cent and in Italy is at the level of 13.6 per cent. In the Netherlands, on the other hand, the largest share of the population has mortgages - 60.7%. The share in northern countries, including Denmark and Finland, as well as in the UK and Belgium, is significantly higher. By contrast, a significantly smaller proportion of the population lives in their own homes - from below 73 per cent in Belgium to less than 63 per cent in Austria.

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