More than 96% of Romanians owned the home they lived in in 2020, the highest rate in the European Union according to Eurostat.
That is significantly higher than across the EU where some 69.7% own where they live, a slight drop from 2019.
In Romania home ownership actually nudged up from 2019 to 2020.
In Romania, 65.9% live in houses and 34.1% in an apartment. But while Romanians own their own homes and almost two-thirds live in houses, their homes are small.
They have 1.1 rooms per person compared to the European average of 1.6 rooms.
Homes are cramped too, the survey found, with 45.1% saying they lived in a cramped space, compared to the EU average of only 18%.
Home ownership is high in other Central European and former communist countries. In Slovakia, Croatia and Hungary, more than 90% of citizens own their own homes.
At the other end of the scale in Germany where 50.4% of residents own their property and 49,6% rent. Like in other EU countries, renting increased.
Large proportions of the population in Austria and Denmark rent where they live, with less than 60% owning property.
Europeans prefer to live in houses despite high population density.
Some 53% live in houses and 46% in a flat. One percent of people live in a mobile home or on a river boat or barge.
In Ireland, 92% live in houses while in Spain 66% live in an apartment.
Maltese people have the most spacious homes with 2.3 rooms per person, followed by Belgium and Ireland where each person has 2.1 rooms to their name.
Austrian police pick up Romanian living in shelter in the woods
