Buying a home is not the (relatively) accessible financial venture it once was – particularly when lots of cities across Europe are home to people earning salaries that pale in comparison to local property prices, on top of inflation and the cost of living crisis we’re all enduring right now.
But there’s a huge disparity across the continent when it comes to the price tag attached to owning your own place. To help you get an idea of your chances, Deloitte’s newly released European Property Index sheds light on the cities where buying your own home is affordable, and where it really, really isn’t.
Affordability was calculated based on the number of average gross annual salaries required to buy a standardised, newly-built, 70 square-metre apartment. While we’ll take this with a pinch of salt (some cities are famously more cramped than others), the analysis is intriguing.
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Claiming the top spot as the least affordable European city to buy a home is (drum roll, please…) Amsterdam. And no, we aren’t shocked either. According to Deloitte’s research, 15.4 salaries would be needed to buy a flat in the Dutch capital.
Two surprising entries followed closely behind in spots number two and three – Athens came in second place, where 15.3 salaries are needed to purchase an apartment, and Prague ranked third, where 15 are needed.
As for the other end of the scale, a mere 4.9 gross annual salaries are needed to purchase an apartment in Turin, making it the joint most affordable city on the ranking, tied with Odense in Denmark.
Manchester, Aarhus and Katowice round out the most affordable top five. Read on for the full list, or have a look at Deloitte’s research here.
These are the least affordable European cities to own a home
- Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Athens, Greece
- Prague, Czechia
- Košice, Slovakia
- Brno, Czechia
- Banská Bystrica
- Bratislava, Slovakia
- Ljubljana, Slovenia
- Thessaloniki, Greece
- Budapest, Hungary
These are the most affordable European cities to own a home
- Turin, Italy
- Odense, Denmark
- Manchester, UK
- Aarhus, Denmark
- Katowice, Poland
- Zagreb, Croatia
- Celje, Slovenia
- Maribor, Slovenia
- Florence, Italy
- Győr, Hungary
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