Producer prices for new residential buildings in the EU increased during the period 2010-2022, especially from 2016, and particularly substantially from 2021 to 2022, according to the European Commission.

The overall increase during the period was 40%. Among the member states, the highest increases were observed in Hungary (+124%), Bulgaria (+103%), and Romania (+97%). Greece was the only member state that recorded a decrease (-1%).

As a result, with the rise in home prices and rents, the cost of housing can be a burden. This can be measured by the housing cost overburden rate, which shows the proportion of the population living in a household where the total housing costs represent more than 40% of disposable income.

In the EU in 2022, 10.6% of the urban population lived in such households, while the corresponding rate for rural areas was 6.6%.

The highest housing cost overburden rates in cities were observed in Greece (27.3%) and Denmark (22.5%), while the lowest were in Slovakia (2.3%) and Croatia (2.6%). In rural areas, they were highest in Greece (24.2%) and Bulgaria (18.1%) and lowest in Malta (0.2%) and Cyprus (0.5%).

Housing cost overburden was higher in cities than in rural areas in 20 member states and lower in 7.

The extremes of these differences were Denmark (13.5 percentage points, with 22.5% in cities and 9.0% in rural areas) and Bulgaria (-5.4 percentage points, with 12.7% and 18.1%).