In the Netherlands, 39.7% of Over-65s Still Live in a Mortgaged Home

Owning a home, and still paying for it

For each age group, Eurostat publishes how people are spread across the ways a household can occupy its home: owning it with a mortgage or housing loan still to repay, owning it with nothing left to repay, renting at the market price, or renting at a reduced price or free of charge. Eurostat calls this tenure status. The figures come from EU-SILC, the EU's annual survey of income and living conditions, and describe 2025.

Tenure is recorded for the household, not the individual. Each person is counted under the arrangement of the home they live in, whoever holds the title deed, so a widowed parent living with an adult child's family shares that family's mortgage in this table, and a 30-year-old in the parental home shares the parents' ownership.

Broken down by age, the table shows two things that a single national ownership rate hides. People aged 65 and over are more likely than adults in their late twenties and early thirties to live in an owned home in every Member State. And in most of the Union a home owned after 65 is owned outright, with three clear exceptions.

Older people live in owned homes more often, everywhere

Across the EU, 54.1% of people aged 25 to 34 lived in an owner-occupied home in 2025. From there the share climbs with every ten-year band: 64.5% at 35 to 44, 72.5% at 45 to 54, 75.6% at 55 to 64 and 77.7% from 65 on. The distance between the youngest and the oldest of those groups is 23.6 percentage points, derived from the two published figures.

The over-65s are ahead in all 27 Member States, but the distance varies a great deal. In Finland, 40.2% of 25- to 34-year-olds and 80.1% of over-65s live in an owned home, a difference of 39.9 points and the widest in the Union. Ireland follows at 35.1 points and Germany at 32.3. Germany also has the lowest share for the younger group anywhere in the EU: 24.6% of its 25- to 34-year-olds live in an owner-occupied home, fewer than one in four.

At the narrow end, Slovakia records 92.3% at 25 to 34 and 96.9% at 65 and over, a difference of 4.6 points. Cyprus at 6.9 and Latvia at 7.3 are the next narrowest.

A high figure for young adults is not a buying rate

Because tenure belongs to the household, a young adult who has never bought anything still counts as living in owner-occupied housing while sharing a home the parents own. Where people stay longer in the family home, the figure for the 25-to-34 group rises without any purchase behind it. The three highest figures for that age group, Slovakia's 92.3%, Romania's 87.5% and Croatia's 87.0%, describe where people of that age live, not what they own.

The EU figures carry a trace of the same effect. The share is higher at 18 to 24, at 61.8%, than at 25 to 34, at 54.1%, which is what the measure would show if many of the younger group have not yet left a home their parents own. At 18 to 24 the three lowest shares are Finland's 32.4%, Denmark's 36.4% and Germany's 38.0%.

The mortgage peaks in mid-life and then fades

Across the EU, 24.5% of people aged 25 to 34 live in a home with a mortgage or housing loan outstanding. The share peaks between 35 and 44, at 35.2%, the highest of any adult age band, then falls to 30.1% at 45 to 54, 18.8% at 55 to 64 and 7.6% at 65 and over. By that last age, 70.1% of people in the EU live in a home owned with nothing left to repay.

That curve holds across most of the Union. In 20 of the 27 Member States the mortgaged share is highest between 35 and 44. In Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Portugal and Sweden it peaks a decade later, between 45 and 54. The two remaining countries are Bulgaria, where the share is level at 2.9% at 25 to 34 and at 35 to 44, and Greece, where it is highest at 18 to 24, at 14.3%.

Where the loan outlasts the working life

The Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark break the pattern at its far end. In the Netherlands 39.7% of people aged 65 and over live in a home still carrying a mortgage or housing loan, in Denmark 36.2% and in Sweden 34.0%. Germany comes next at 11.5% and Finland at 10.4%. Every other Member State is below 8%.

In the Netherlands and Denmark the mortgaged home is the more common form of ownership after 65: 39.7% against 23.5% owning outright in the Netherlands, 36.2% against 24.5% in Denmark. No other Member State shows that. In Sweden outright owners remain ahead among over-65s, at 38.6%.

The same three countries head the EU in the two age bands before 65. At 45 to 54 the Netherlands records 68.4% in a mortgaged home, Denmark 60.4% and Sweden 57.1%; at 55 to 64 the Netherlands records 57.3%, Sweden 53.7% and Denmark 50.8%. The Netherlands also has the highest share at 35 to 44, 68.6%. Set beside those figures, the share after 65 reads less as an anomaly than as the last stage of a pattern in which housing loans stay common to the end of working life.

The table records that a loan is outstanding, nothing more. It does not say how large the remaining balance is, whether the loan is being paid down, or whether it will be carried until the home is sold.

Where housing loans are almost absent

At the other end of the ranking, Romania records 0.0% of over-65s in a mortgaged home, Bulgaria 0.2% and Malta 0.4%. In 18 Member States the share is below 5%. The four highest shares of over-65s in a home owned outright are Romania's 97.9%, Croatia's 95.4%, Lithuania's 93.5%, a provisional figure, and Slovakia's 93.3%.

In Romania and Bulgaria the housing loan is close to absent at every age: across their whole populations, 1.1% and 1.7% live in a mortgaged home, and no age group in either country is above 3.0%. In those two countries the life-course curve described above barely exists.

Two different things called ownership

A single ownership rate mixes all these stages together, and in a few countries the mix runs against the life-course pattern. In the Netherlands, 80.2% of children under 18 live in an owner-occupied home, against 63.3% of people aged 65 and over. Denmark, Latvia and, narrowly, Austria are the other Member States where children are more likely than over-65s to live in an owned home; in the remaining 23 the older group leads.

The one word also covers two arrangements that the tenure split keeps apart. The Netherlands and Greece have almost the same overall ownership rate, 68.7% and 69.3%. In the Netherlands 57.9% of the population lives in a mortgaged home and 10.8% in one owned outright; in Greece the figures are 8.9% and 60.4%. Denmark's split, 45.5% and 12.8%, leans the Dutch way, while in 13 Member States, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia among them, outright owners outnumber mortgaged ones in every age group. The same ownership rate can describe a country where the home is largely paid for and one where it is largely still being paid for.