Rent or borrow: the fair comparison, city by city.

Europe

What Europe shows — and why there are exceptions.

Bulgaria is not an exception but part of the rule. In Central and Eastern Europe almost everyone lives in a home they own:

Share of the population living in a home owned by the household. Eurostat, 2025; Switzerland — 2024.

At the other end of the table are Germany, Austria and Switzerland. They are often quoted by anyone wanting to prove that “in the West everyone rents”. But exceptions usually have their own reasons — not always visible at first glance, but very rational. These three do.

Switzerland: prices. Over the past ten years homes in Zurich have risen in price by about 60% — twice as much as rents and five times as much as incomes. According to UBS, a flat there costs as much as 43 years of rent, the most of 21 major cities worldwide. Banks require at least a 20% down payment, at least half of it in the buyer’s own money, and test the payment at a notional rate of about 5%, which must not exceed a third of income. On top of that, owners have for years paid tax on the rent they “would receive” from their own home. In September 2025 the Swiss voted to abolish it. In other words, the Swiss do not choose to rent. For most people, buying is simply out of reach.

Germany: the state built for renting, and now hardly builds at all. After the war Germany rebuilt its housing mainly as rented homes. Tenants are strongly protected: leases are usually open-ended, and in high-demand cities a new rent may be no more than 10% above the local average — a rule extended to 2029. Buying, meanwhile, is expensive: the purchase tax is between 3.5% and 6.5%, and mortgage interest is not tax-deductible. Huge landlords have appeared in the big cities — the largest, Vonovia, holds more than 530,000 homes, and Berlin is debating the nationalisation of more than 144,000. Today the German buyer also has a simpler problem: there is nothing to buy. In 2025 the country completed 206,600 homes — the fewest since 2012 — of which just 41,800 were single-family houses.

And most telling of all: two thirds of German tenants want to live in a home of their own. So even there, renting is a constraint, not a dream.

Austria: Vienna. The low share comes mostly from the capital. The City of Vienna owns about 220,000 municipal flats and subsidises around 200,000 more. Close to 43% of Viennese households live in such homes, at regulated rents.

The rule is clear. Where buying is affordable and the state has not built a huge regulated rental sector, Europeans buy. Just as we do.

Being honest about the sums

When the sums could turn.

At 2.41% owning wins everywhere. In Sofia renting and owning only break even at a rate of 3.46%; in Ruse and Shumen at about 3.6%; in Veliko Tarnovo at 2.95%. In Varna, Burgas, Plovdiv and Stara Zagora the rate would have to pass 4.6–5.3%.

Buying also has one-off costs — the 3% purchase tax, the notary and registration. For a two-room flat in Sofia that is about €6,440. At a difference of €127 a month you earn it back in about 4 years; in Varna, Burgas, Plovdiv and Stara Zagora in under two and a half; in Veliko Tarnovo in more than 8. So if you don’t yet know whether you will stay in the city, renting is the sensible choice — exactly as the rule above says. We have checked the tax in each municipality in “Property purchase tax by municipality”.

Prices and rents come from listings, not deals. Best Place’s market review for the first quarter gives similar rents for Sofia, around €600, but up to 10–20% lower in Plovdiv, Varna and Burgas and up to a third lower in the smaller cities. If the real rent is lower, the gap narrows — on those figures renting comes out cheaper in Veliko Tarnovo, and in Ruse the difference almost disappears. Nor have we counted price changes: if homes rise in value, owning wins by even more.