Rents across the European Union are climbing faster than consumer prices in many member states, but two countries stand far above the rest. Between the second quarters of 2025 and 2026, actual rental payments rose by 3% across the bloc as a whole. In Romania the increase reached 43.5%, and in Croatia 40.1%, according to Eurostat. With headline inflation at 9.5% in Romania and 4.8% in Croatia over the same period, real rents still rose by more than 30% in both countries — a scale of increase with no parallel elsewhere in the EU.
Slovenia recorded the third-highest rise, at 10%, or just over 6% once inflation is stripped out. Turkey, which is an EU candidate rather than a member, posted the highest rent inflation of any country in the wider European comparison at 49.6%, though its increases have been gradual rather than sudden, and with overall inflation above 30% the real terms rise was smaller than in Romania or Croatia. Serbia saw rents climb 12.5%, while Bulgaria (9.9%), North Macedonia (9.2%), Iceland (8.6%), Greece (7.5%), Czechia (6.2%), Albania (6%), Slovakia (5.3%), Lithuania (5.3%) and Portugal (5.2%) all recorded increases above 5%.
Why Romania and Croatia stand apart
National data providers offered Euronews Business differing explanations for the two outliers. Romania's government attributed the surge mainly to administered rents — the rents charged for housing owned by the state or by local administrative units. But Dr Adriana M. Soaita of the University of Glasgow questioned that reading. Public rental housing accounts for too small a share of the overall stock to move the national average, she argued, and its rents sit so far below private-sector levels that even tripling them would barely register. If inflation-adjusted rents are still rising sharply, she suggested, the pressure is more likely coming from newly built or fully renovated properties entering the market at higher price points.
In Croatia, the statistical authority pointed to a decision by Zagreb city authorities to raise rents in the social-rent category. Prof. Gojko Bezovan of the University of Zagreb offered a broader structural explanation: a large share of Croatia's housing stock has been financialised, with apartment purchases and tourism-oriented real estate functioning as the dominant form of household savings. Many units in new developments are bought as investments rather than homes and are often left vacant. A tax on empty apartments introduced in 2025 appears to have changed behaviour — registrations of residential rental contracts with the tax administration rose markedly through 2025 and 2026. As Bezovan put it, a larger number of higher-quality units in major cities entered the rental market, with asking rents well above the average.
Big economies see real-term declines
Among the EU's four largest economies, only Italy exceeded the bloc average, at 3.5%. Spain recorded 2.5%, Germany 2.1% and France 1.6%. In Belgium, Estonia, Finland and Luxembourg, rents failed to keep pace with inflation altogether. Finland sat at the bottom of the Eurostat table with zero nominal rent growth. The August 2025 to August 2026 comparison showed a similar EU-wide trend of 2.9%, with one notable exception: Croatia's annual figure for August was far lower at 4.3%, reflecting a sharp index jump between July and August 2025 that distorts the base.
Analysts caution that the headline Eurostat figures understate pressure in specific segments. Emma Rosser, EMEA living research director at JLL, said the agency is not seeing dramatic increases across all lets, but growth on new lettings remains elevated and accelerating — a signal of future strain across the wider market. "Strong competition for scarce rental housing in European cities is driving elevated price growth for new tenancies," she said, adding that the supply-demand imbalance is visible across the continent but most acute in cities with the fastest rental growth.
Dr Nóra Teller of the Budapest-based Metropolitan Research Institute pointed to a mix of economic, demographic and supply-side factors. Years of low interest rates fuelled property borrowing until 2022, when financing costs jumped sharply and pushed would-be first-time buyers into the private rented sector. She also highlighted financialisation as a driver: institutional investors, private equity funds, real estate investment trusts and buy-to-let owners increasingly treat housing as a financial asset rather than a social good.
The picture is not uniform, and the policy responses differ accordingly. Croatia's vacancy tax is one attempt to bring empty stock into use; Romania's administered-rent explanation points to state-set prices that affect only a sliver of the market. For tenants in Bucharest, Zagreb and other fast-tightening cities, the practical result is the same: a shrinking share of income going to rent, and little sign of relief in the near term. The contrast with Berlin, Paris and Madrid — where real rents have fallen or stagnated — underlines how unevenly Europe's housing crunch is distributed.
