Citizens of other EU member states living in Malta experience the second-highest “overburdened” housing rate in Europe, a study published by Eurostat found.
The study looked at the housing cost overburden rate, defined by the percentage of people living in housing where more than 40 per cent of the household disposable income is spent on housing costs.
This includes payment of rent or property loans as well as utility costs to run the household.
Some 35 per cent of citizens of other EU member states living here are overburdened by housing costs. This rate for EU citizens was only higher in Greece, where 57 per cent of EU citizens faced overburdening housing costs.
Malta was followed closely by Spain at 33 per cent.
About a fifth of non-EU nationals living here faced overburdening housing costs and only around 1.3 per cent of national citizens felt overburdened by the cost of housing.
Large gap between locals and non-Maltese EU citizens
Malta also represented the largest gap in the overburden rate between national citizens and EU citizens from other member states, with a difference of 33.5 percentage points, bucking the trend among other states, where the gap between national citizens and EU citizens tended to be much narrower.
Across the EU, some 25 per cent of non-EU citizens faced a significant burden on their disposable income from housing costs, compared with 19 per cent for citizens from other EU countries and nine per cent for national citizens.
The highest housing cost overburden rate for non-EU citizens was recorded in Greece (70 per cent), ahead of Bulgaria (40 per cent), Spain (34 per cent) and Poland (30 per cent) while the lowest were observed in Cyprus (eight per cent), Latvia (eight per cent) and Estonia (seven per cent).
For national citizens, the housing cost overburden rate ranged from one per cent in Cyprus and Malta up to 34 per cent in Greece.
The largest differences between housing cost overburden rates for non-EU citizens and national citizens were recorded in Greece (35.9 percentage points), Spain (27.6 percentage points), Bulgaria (27.4 percentage points) and Poland (23.5 percentage points).