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25 Countries with the Highest Home Ownership Rates
Zarah Hamid
9 min read

In This Article:

In this article, we will be analyzing the booming home ownership statistics across the world while covering the 25 countries with the highest home ownership rates. If you wish to skip our detailed analysis, you can move directly to the 5 Countries with the Highest Home Ownership Rates.

An Analysis of Home Ownership Rates Across the Globe

The European Union comprises many countries where the proportion of home owners significantly exceeds the renters. As reported by Eurostat, owning homes was more common than renting in all member states except Germany. Romania, Slovakia, and Croatia recorded the highest share of those who own homes in the EU. These countries have only 5.2%, 7%, and 8.9% tenants respectively which indicates that their housing markets are mostly dominated by owners. Other European nations where home ownership is high include Poland, Hungary, and Lithuania, and we will explore them in detail below.

The overall trend in the EU is also positive regarding home ownership, since 69% of the population lives as home owners. As compared to flats, houses seem to be common in two-thirds of the EU member states. The highest shares of the population living in a house have been recorded at 89% in Ireland, 79% in the Netherlands, and 77% in both Croatia and Belgium. Houses have been the most common in rural areas where 83% of the population resides in them. Flats are more preferred in cities with 72% of the population living in them. In towns and suburbs, 56% of people reside in a house and 43% in a flat.

The world’s second-largest economy, China, also boasts high home ownership. On February 28, Reuters reported that over 550 million Chinese crossed the rural-urban divide to settle in cities between 1998 and 2023. This equates to two-thirds of the total population in Europe. Private home sales and rapid urbanization enabled the nation to have one of the highest home ownership rates. Unfortunately, the country was subjected to a property crisis during 2021 by the default of Evergrande Group, one of the country’s largest developers, ultimately affecting other developers including Country Garden, Kaisa Group, Fantasia Holdings, and Sunac. Previously, we have also covered some of the biggest real estate companies in China.

On May 1, MSN reported that research regarding China's property market crisis revealed that the Chinese real estate industry was increasingly more concentrated among large developers, which made up the majority of the housing supply between the early 2000s and 2018. 30% of the country's total housing production came from the top five Chinese real estate developers. With the filing for bankruptcy protection by Evergrande in August 2023 and Country Garden defaulting in October 2023, the property market suffered. The concentrated sector was also a result of how land owned by the government was sold to the highest bidder which was usually large developers with ample financial resources. Large developers with direct or indirect ties to the state could conveniently obtain bank loans from many of the state-owned banks. Back in August 2022, BBC reported that home owners halted mortgage payments as developers defaulted on debts and construction stopped. Since many home owners had paid upfront, they wanted their homes to be delivered to resume payments. Currently, China is planning to have at least 30% of its housing stock made up of state-built housing for low-cost rental or sale under restricted conditions.

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