Malta's housing cost overburden is the lowest in Europe, Eurostat said this week.

In 2014, the housing cost overburden was by far the highest in Greece, where 40.7% of the population were living in a household where total housing costs represented more than 40% of total disposable household income.

It was followed at a distance by Germany (15.9%), Denmark (15.6%), the Netherlands (15.4%) and Romania (14.9%).

At the opposite end of the scale, Malta (1.6% of the total population), Cyprus (4.0%), France and Finland (both 5.1%) registered the lowest housing cost overburden rates.

At EU level, 11.4% of the population were living in households which spent more than 40% of their disposable income on housing.

In a majority of Member States, the largest part of the population were living in 2014 in houses, with the highest proportions being recorded in the United Kingdom (84.7%), Croatia (80.8%), Belgium (77.6%), the Netherlands (77.1%), Cyprus (72.7%) and Slovenia (70.3%).

In contrast, flats were the main dwelling type, notably in Spain (where 66.5% of the population were living in flats in 2014), Latvia (65.1%), Lithuania (58.4%) and Greece (56.9%).

47.1% of the Maltese live in houses and 52.6% live in flats.

Regarding tenure status, there were more owners than tenants in every EU Member State in 2014.

The highest shares of the population owning their dwelling were registered in Romania (with 96.1% of owners), Slovakia (90.3%) Lithuania (89.9%), Croatia (89.7%) and Hungary (89.1%), while less than two-thirds of the population owned their dwelling in Germany (52.5%) and Austria (57.2%), followed by Denmark (63.3%), the United Kingdom (64.8%) and France (65.1%).

In Malta 80% of the population own their dwelling.