Cyprus

Cyprus's housing market experienced robust growth in early 2025, with residential property sales rising 24.8% year-on-year in Q1, reaching a transaction value of €391 million. Property sales hit a 17-year high in the January-July period with 10,561 contracts, representing a 14.7% nationwide increase.

Housing ownership patterns show 69.4% of Cypriots own their homes while 30.6% are tenants, reflecting a gradual shift from the 72.9% homeownership rate in 2014. Rental prices vary significantly by district, with average monthly apartment rents ranging from €795 in Famagusta to €2,742 in Limassol. The national average apartment rent stands at €1,803, while houses average €3,249 monthly.

Property prices continued growing at 6.51% annually in Q3 2024, though the pace is moderating. Apartments showed stronger price growth at 8.8% compared to houses at 6.0%. Rental yields average 5.42% for apartments and 3.03% for houses.

Social housing in Cyprus is managed primarily by the Cyprus Land Development Corporation, established in 1980. The government provides public housing projects offering affordable rental units for low-income families, subsidized housing programs with financial assistance, and cooperative housing models encouraging community participation. Social housing faces challenges including affordability issues, supply constraints, bureaucratic hurdles, and stigmatization, despite government efforts to expand availability through increased investment and streamlined processes.

Cyprus is experiencing a pronounced housing crisis marked mainly by soaring rents and ongoing affordability challenges. Since 2017, typical rents for a one-bedroom apartment have doubled, commonly exceeding 1,200–1,400 euros per month in 2025, especially in urban centers like Limassol and Nicosia. This sharp rent inflation results from a surge in demand from both foreign investors and newly arrived expats and digital nomads, combined with limited affordable housing supply and increased property speculation. Construction activity has not sufficiently addressed the demand, as many new developments mainly target higher-end buyers, leaving affordable homes scarce.

The groups hardest hit by the crisis are local families, low-income residents, students, migrants, and the elderly. Many Cypriots now spend over 40% of their household income on rent, which is well above EU affordability guidelines. Students face fierce competition for flats with young professionals, while migrants and pensioners are routinely priced out of central districts and forced into overcrowded or substandard housing. Unregulated expansion of short-term rentals such as Airbnb has further reduced the long-term housing supply, amplifying pressures on locals. The result is growing social inequality, longer commutes, and disruption of established communities, indicating that Cyprus’s housing crisis is widespread and deeply impacts vulnerable and middle-income residents.

Cyprus’s government is addressing affordable and sustainable housing through a multi-pronged national strategy centred on increasing supply, lowering costs, and easing access for citizens, especially young families and vulnerable groups. The Housing My Future plan and the Build to Rent scheme require developers to set aside a portion of new units for affordable rental or purchase. Recent targets include constructing over 1,900 residential units, with almost 300 designated as affordable housing, and allocating an additional €8.7 million to the Affordable Housing Fund. In 2025, the government plans to roll out 200 new housing units, alongside a Limassol project of 138 affordable homes.

Key programs include the Renovate-Rent initiative, offering tax breaks for refurbishing and renting unused housing stock, and the Concession of Plots Plan, enabling low- and middle-income families to buy state land at just 25% of its value. The state is also streamlining building permit processes to accelerate housing delivery and increasing staff in regional offices to tackle bureaucratic delays. Urban planning incentives allow higher-density development if part of the stock is affordable, and minimum apartment size requirements in certain zones are being lowered to allow for more, smaller units. Cyprus has made it an EU-level priority, with sustainable and affordable housing high on its agenda for its upcoming EU Presidency.

Housing cooperatives in Cyprus play a marginal role in the national housing landscape, accounting for less than 1% of the total housing stock. The sector is tightly regulated, with government oversight ensuring that cooperative profits are reinvested and management is subject to public control. While most affordable and social housing supply is provided through the Cyprus Land Development Corporation, cooperative housing models remain rare and have not achieved significant scale.

Recent dynamics show some government initiatives to promote cooperative and more inclusive housing forms. Notably, the Ministry of Interior has put forward proposals offering tax incentives for cooperative housing establishment, and a pilot community land trust is underway in Nicosia, aiming to deliver new affordable models through local partnerships. However, these efforts remain in early stages, and the sector has not grown appreciably in recent years.

Government policy has focused more broadly on affordable housing through subsidies, zoning reforms, rent supports, grants for first-time buyers, and modernization of planning processes, rather than expanding the cooperative sector specifically. The share of cooperative housing in the overall housing market remains negligible, with limited evidence of significant expansion or mainstream policy prioritization for this sector. Most affordable housing measures are channeled through public or subsidized schemes rather than cooperative initiatives.