Resource overview
Housing Europe’s report “The State of Housing in Europe 2025: Trends in a Nutshell” is published by Housing Europe and authored by Marco Corradi and Laurent Ghekière. It compiles evidence from Housing Europe Observatory and input from member organisations across multiple European countries, focusing on the scale and drivers of the current housing crisis and the implications for public, cooperative, and social housing providers.
A structural housing crisis across Europe
The report describes Europe’s housing crisis as structural and systemic, affecting daily life and contributing to rising inequality, social exclusion, and declining trust in public institutions. Housing is framed as essential for social cohesion and economic competitiveness, with the report arguing that the private sector alone cannot close the gap between needs and supply.
Housing needs far outstrip supply
Across Europe, demand is driven by population growth, household formation, urbanisation, and migration, while supply is constrained by rising costs, limited financing, and slow construction pipelines. Where national estimates exist, the report cites large annual needs: France needs 518,000 homes per year (including 198,000 social homes); Germany needs at least 400,000 (including 140,000 social); the Netherlands is projected to need nearly 1 million homes by 2031; and Sweden more than 500,000 by 2033. Production in many contexts is described as falling short—often by close to half.
Waiting lists and unmet need indicators
The report highlights swelling social housing waiting lists as a key signal of deep shortages. France is cited with nearly 2.8 million pending applications, alongside hundreds of thousands in Italy, Portugal, and Germany’s urban areas. It also points to qualitative deficits: in Czechia, at least 161,000 people are reported to live in inadequate housing conditions (including 45,000 roofless), and up to 1.3 million face energy poverty; Portugal is cited with 130,000 families in inadequate housing.
New build slowdown and uneven renovation progress
Many countries report declining construction due to escalating material costs, higher interest rates, and constrained financing (including France, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, and Italy). The report notes that residential construction is expected to reach a ten-year low in 2025. Renovation activity is linked to decarbonisation goals but progresses unevenly: some countries advance climate-driven retrofits, while others face funding and economic constraints that delay or scale back works.
The role of public, cooperative, and social housing providers
The report underscores the counter-cyclical role of public, cooperative, and social providers, which in several countries deliver a significant share of new homes despite adverse market conditions. Examples cited include Dutch housing associations delivering about one third of new housing completions in 2024; the French social housing sector accounting for almost 30% of housing starts in 2024; limited-profit housing companies building roughly one in four new homes in Austria; and municipal housing companies producing about one fifth of new supply in Finland.
Governance changes and the EU’s ambivalent role
Reforms across countries are described as mixed, with both progress and setbacks. At EU level, the report characterises the EU as both constraint and opportunity: fiscal rules and debt classifications can limit investment capacity, while EU funds and European Investment Bank loans are viewed as important levers to unlock new supply and accelerate renovations. Housing providers call for more flexible, counter-cyclical EU support mechanisms that can adapt to rising costs while ensuring social fairness.