Keys Changing Hands: Which European Nations are Leading the Home Sales Recovery
Europe’s housing market regained momentum in 2025. Four countries recorded annual sales growth of more than 20%. Experts explain that the market began to recover as Euribor and other bank interest rates stabilised. People who had hesitated to buy during a period of uncertainty gained greater predictability from late 2024 onwards.
The European housing market has entered a phase of stabilization and recovery, moving past the prolonged stagnation brought on by expensive mortgage credit and cautious buyers. According to newly released data from Eurostat, property transaction volumes in 2025—encompassing both new and existing houses and apartments bought by households—rebounded across the vast majority of the European Union.
This recovery is proving highly uneven, driven by shifting regional dynamics and differing local economic conditions.
Out of 18 EU countries providing comparable voluntary data, transaction volumes rose in 15 nations, signaling that pent-up demand is finally returning to the market as inflation cools and interest rates stabilize into a "new normal."
Where buyers flooded back into the market
Leading the European continent, Slovenia (+29.9%) saw the most massive surge in housing transactions .
Lithuania (+22.8%), recorded the second-highest jump, driven by a resilient economy and domestic buyers capitalizing on stabilizing market conditions.
Austria (+21.4%), rounding out the top three, experienced a major transactional boom, despite the fact that its actual home prices rose at a slower pace than the general cost of living during this period.
Belgium (20.2%) also recorded growth of more than 20%.
The annual increase was also in double digits in Luxembourg (18.6%), Hungary (17.3%), the Netherlands (13.9%), Denmark (12.7%), France (11.2%) and Portugal (10.5%).
Latvia (9.2%), Finland (9%) and Norway (8.3%) saw increases close to 10%.
Home sales in Spain rose in 2025 by 5.4%.
French million
Among the 14 countries with available data, France ranked first, with more than one million homes sold in 2025.
Meanwhile, French house prices rose by just 0.1% between the first quarters of 2025 and 2026.
In the Netherlands, 265,000 homes changed hands.
Hungary, Belgium, Portugal and Norway each recorded between 130,000 and 160,000 home sales.
Slovenia had the highest annual growth in percentage terms but the lowest number of sales at 11,000.
Markets That Kept Cooling
While most of Europe saw a rush of signatures on property deeds, three distinct markets continued to see drops in total home sales.
Croatia (-4.1%) witnessed the sharpest decline in transactional volume. Despite dropping in sales activity, Croatia paradoxically led Europe in actual property price inflation (+16.1% year-on-year), indicating a highly constrained market where soaring prices are locking regular buyers out.
Bulgaria (-2.5%) followed a similar trajectory to Croatia—fewer hands changing keys, but higher price tags for the properties that did sell.
Poland (-1.1%) recorded a marginal dip in transaction volume. Experts point to a cooling down period following hyper-intense growth cycles. Despite the minor dip in the number of sales, major metropolitan centers like Warsaw and Kraków reached price parity with classic Western hubs, matching average square-meter costs seen in Rome.
While the volume of sales increased in 15 out of 18 surveyed countries, the overall cost of buying a home across the EU pushed upward by an average of 5.5% year-on-year. Long-term data highlights the depth of Europe's persistent housing crisis.
Since 2015, property prices across the EU have surged by an average of 64.9%, vastly outpacing rental growth.
In places like Hungary, property values have skyrocketed by a historic 277% over the last decade and a half.
Compounding this, structural changes are shifting the landscape. In heavy-weight Western European markets like Germany, France, and the Netherlands, purchase price growth sat at a modest 1% to 3%. This has pushed a large segment of the population into the rental sector, triggering severe shortages and massive rent hikes in capital cities like Berlin, Amsterdam, and Dublin.
Real estate is the main source of household wealth in the eurozone, according to the European Central Bank.While some nations are witnessing a rapid operational recovery as buyers adjust to contemporary borrowing rates, others remain trapped in a cycle of high prices and low supply, making homeownership an increasingly exclusive luxury.