Around 14 percent of Germans live in a household that suffers from high housing costs – in other words, more than 40 percent of their income has to be spent on rent, electricity and heating. This is less than in previous years, but the EU comparison shows an above-average overload rate.
Around every seventh German suffers from an overload of housing costs. As reported by the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden, citing EU statistics, last year around 11.4 million people in this country lived in a household that, according to the official definition, was financially overtaxed by housing costs. This corresponded to a share of 14 percent of the population.
A household is overloaded by housing costs whenever it has to spend more than 40 percent of its disposable income on housing. It doesn't matter whether he uses it to pay rent or finance his own property. The congestion rate in Germany has fallen slightly in recent years. According to the Federal Office, 16 percent of the population or 12.7 million people were affected in 2014.
On average, people in Germany have to spend 26 percent or around a quarter of their disposable income on rent plus ancillary costs or maintenance of their home. According to the statistics, this changed little compared to 2014. At that time, the proportion was 27 percent.
In an EU comparison, Germany's congestion rate was above average. Only in Greece, Bulgaria and Denmark was the rate of households overburdened by their housing costs higher. In Greece, the share was by far the highest at 36 percent. The average rate in the EU was 9.3 percent.
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