The Average Salary No Longer Buys an Average Home

The long-standing idea that a stable job and an average salary can secure a decent family home is breaking down across Europe. House prices have risen much faster than household incomes for more than a decade, widening the gap between earnings and the cost of buying property.

At least 70% of Europe’s population lives in areas where an average salary is not enough to buy a home larger than 75 square meters, even with a 30-year mortgage. That threshold roughly corresponds to a typical two-bedroom family home. The figure shows how sharply homeownership has moved beyond the reach of much of the middle class.

The findings come from a study published Thursday in the Journal of Maps by Franziska Sielker and Selim Banabak, researchers at the Vienna University of Technology. They analyzed more than 22 million property listings in 31 European countries. The study offers a continent-wide comparison rather than precise rankings of individual countries.

Coastal areas rank among the most pressured markets, as tourism and second homes push prices far above local incomes. The article identifies Spain, France, Portugal, Greece and Croatia among the countries affected. Conditions are particularly tight in major European cities, where 60% of the urban population lives in areas where an average salary cannot buy even a 50-square-meter home, roughly the size of a one-bedroom apartment or studio, with a typical mortgage.

Across Europe, 44% of people live in areas facing this level of restricted access. In those markets, many households spend more than one-third of their income on housing, a level considered financially unhealthy. Only 5% of Europe’s population lives in the most affordable areas, where property costs allow buyers to choose larger homes without mortgage payments exceeding that threshold. The study applies the same method to rents and finds that four in ten people live in areas where renting an apartment is also unaffordable, although the supplied article ends before giving the full rental result.