The crisis, in numbers
Sourced data and quotes on the European housing crisis. Every figure is cited.
"A crisis of affordable housing squeezes family incomes; deepens inequalities; harms the health of children; impoverishes young people; and drives a growing crisis of homelessness."
Volker Turk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2023)
"We cannot move forward if our youth are unable to rent - let alone buy - a place they can call home."
Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament (2024)
"Whereas baby-boomers tend to own big, expensive houses, youngsters must increasingly rent somewhere cramped with their friends, fomenting millennials' resentment of their elders."
The Economist (2020), quoted in Eurofound (2025)
A generation priced out
Between 2010 and 2024, average house prices across the EU rose by 55.4% and rents by 26.7%, while average wages grew by just 28%. In some member states prices more than tripled. Young workers were hit hardest: their pay has grown more slowly than older cohorts (a widening age pay gap), and as new entrants they rarely benefit from the rent protections that shield long-standing, older tenants. The result is a cohort - sometimes called the unlucky generation, or Generation Rent - for whom buying a first home has slipped out of reach and renting eats a third of their income. Source: Eurofound (2025).
Stuck at home, and it is not a choice
Almost one in three 25 to 34-year-olds in the EU still live with their parents, and of those, only 40% would choose to - most of the rest would rather live alone or with a partner but cannot afford to. Where young people do move out, they spend far more of their income on housing and are more likely to live in overcrowded, poor-quality homes. Eurofound estimates a housing deficit of between 6% (Czechia) and 10% (Sweden) of the national dwelling stock. The knock-on effects are concrete: delayed careers, worse mental health, and young people putting off having children or having fewer than they wanted. Source: Eurofound (2025).
This is what the delusion looks like up close
The numbers above are the backdrop. This site is the foreground: the individual listings - the shoeboxes, sheds and shift-beds - that these averages are made of. Every approved listing here is a real receipt of a market that has lost touch with what people earn and how they live.
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