On 29 September Eurostat published its 2025 data on overcrowded housing across the EU. For Bulgaria the picture is familiar, but the numbers are worth a careful read: 52.8% of young people aged 15–29 live in an overcrowded home. That is the third-highest share in the European Union, after Romania (60.4%) and Latvia (54.9%), and almost double the EU average of 26.9%.
All figures are indicative and were checked in October 2026.
Eurostat does not measure square metres — it counts rooms. A home is overcrowded if the household has fewer rooms than a set minimum: one room for the household, one per couple, one for each single person aged 18 or over, one per pair of same-sex teenagers (12–17), one for each other teenager, and one per pair of children under 12.
In other words, a family with two children and a grandparent living in a spacious but two-room flat counts as overcrowded, however large the floor area.
The trend is improving, but slowly: the overall share fell by just over one point in a year.
Bulgaria has one of the highest home-ownership rates in Europe — 86.1% of the population lived in an owner-occupied home in 2025, against an EU average of 68% (2024). Yet according to the latest Eurostat figures, published in June 2026, only 15.8% of Bulgarians live in a home with "spare" rooms, compared with 33.4% across the EU.
The explanation lies in the housing stock itself. Much of it consists of one- and two-bedroom flats in panel and brick blocks built for pre-1990 households. Ownership is high, but it often means several generations under one roof in a home designed for one.
Young Bulgarians leave the parental home at an average age of 27.9 (2025), against 26.3 across the EU. The reasons are not only cultural. According to the National Statistical Institute, house prices in the second quarter of 2026 were 15.5% higher than a year earlier — covered in detail in our analysis of the NSI data. Rents are also rising faster than the EU average, as we set out in our report on Eurostat rent data.
Demand for homes with more separate rooms is structural, not seasonal. If you are selling a two-room flat whose layout allows a third room to be created, make that clear in the listing and at viewings. The same logic applies to letting: for young tenants sharing a flat, the number of separate rooms often matters more than the floor area.
Eurostat's data is not a headline of the day — it describes a deep-rooted feature of the housing stock. That is exactly why it is useful: it shows where the real shortage in the market lies — less in square metres than in rooms.
If you are looking for a home with the right layout, or want to know whether your property could offer buyers more, give us a call or drop by our office — we'd be glad to talk it through in person.
