Why are young Europeans leaving home later?
Despite many blame it on housing costs, data suggests otherwise.
We all thought the pattern was set: A Levels, going to university, leaving with your uni friends for a couple of years, graduating, finding a job, and not going back home. Home became somewhere to return to on Sundays for a roast, on Christmas Eve, or to stock up on Tupperware and eat a meal that smelled of childhood.
Over 800,000 graduates have just finished higher education degrees in recent weeks. However, many are realising that this pattern seems to have changed. It is now the case of many young adults holding a fresh diploma who are finding themselves back in their childhood bedrooms, taking years to save up to leave again.
According to the Office for National Statistics’ latest Families and households in the UK report, more young adults now live with their parents than ten years ago. There has been a noticeable increase in the average leaving home age: between 2014 and 2024, there has been a 9.9% increase in the percentage of young adults aged 20 to 34 living with their parents, from 3.3 million in 2014, to 3.6 in 2024. It is undeniable: the number of middle-aged parents suffering from the ‘empty nest’ syndrome is in decline.
Rising rents, the cost of living, and the difficulty of saving for a deposit have made independent living harder for young people. According to the BBC data published in September 2025, over 97% of UK adults living with their parents were unable to afford the cost of what a first-time buyer in their area pays for a house.
Yet the UK still sits below the European average when it comes to leaving home. According to Eurostat, young people in the EU left the parental home at an average age of 26.2 in 2024, compared to an average of 24 in the UK. But acoross Europe, most of the countries are moving towards the same direction: young adults are staying in the family home for longer. When looking for an explanation, housing costs are often treated as the obvious cause.
Looking across Europe helps test that assumption. By that logic, if housing affordability were the main factor, the countries where homes are most expensive compared with incomes should also be the countries where young people leave home latest.
But the data suggests a more complex picture.
The graph below compares the average age at which young people leave the parental home across Europe with each country’s house price-to-income ratio as of 2024. It shows that housing affordability matters, but it does not explain the pattern on its own.
Some countries like Spain and Greece, appear to support the housing-pressure argument. Both countries have relatively high leaving-home ages and sit on the right-hand side of the chart, suggesting that the youth leave home relatively late and have a relatively high house price-to-income ratio. In Spain, young people leave the parental home at around 30, being one of the highest figures in Europe. In Greece, the figure is even higher, at nearly 31.
In Spain, the pressure is visible beyond the data, especially for those looking to live in big cities. Maurici Serra, head of Finques Albalate, a property management company in Barclona, argues that rising rents have made independence far harder for young people than it was for previous generations.
‘In 30 years, salaries have gone up by around 95%, but the price of housing has gone up by approximately 470%,’ he says. ‘A young couple now spends more or less 55% of their income on rent. Thirty years ago, it was around 25% , less than half. Young people have it much harder to leave home than they did back in the day.’
What Maurici points out is the story of many young adults in Spain. ‘I’m 28 and, despite having worked full time as an architect in a well-known firm in Barcelona for over five years, I still go back home every day after work’, explains Tomás Martínez, who lives with his parents in Barcelona’s outskirts.
In contrast, in England, despite the rising number of graduates who are facing similar pressures, tenants in the UK spend around 36% of their income on rent, a figure which is even lower in Wales (25%). Maddie, Freya, and Aimie, have just graduated at Oxford Brookes University and plan to continue living together. ‘Only one of us has a full-time job lined up, but we will all manage to afford sharing a flat in Bristol,’ explains Maddie.
At first, both cases seem to answer the question: expensive rent means staying home for longer. But Spain and the United Kingdom are only one part of the European picture. Once you look at other countries, the relationship between housing affordability and leaving-home age becomes less straightforward.
According to the data, Croatia has the latest leaving-home age in the EU, of 31.5. However, it does not have the highest house price-to-income ratios in Europe. Italy follows a similar pattern, with young people leaving home at 30.2, despite lower housing affordability pressure than countries such as Portugal or Luxembourg.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have countries that also point towards a different pattern. Portugal has one of the highest house price-to-income ratios in the chart, yet youg people decide to leave home earlier than in Croatia, Greece, Italy or Spain, at around 28.8. Luxembourg is a similar case: a low house affordability situation but a leaving-home age of 26.6, close to the EU average.
The Nordic countries complicate the picture even further, presenting a different case. Finland, Denmark and Sweden have some of the lowest leaving-home ages in Europe. Denmark (21.8), Sweden (23.1). In Finland, young people leave home at 21.3. Despite not having the most affordable housing markets, as seen in the chart, young adults still tend to leave home much earlier than in southern and eastern Europe.
These contrasts suggest that affordability is not the only factor that determines if young people can leave home. In their countries, is leaving home early expected, necessary, and supported?
As illustrated in the map, there is, in fact, a geographical pattern emerging. The further south and east you go in Europe, the later young people tend to leave home. In the north, especially in Scandinavia, moving out in the early twenties is much more common than in southern Europe.
This brings in a factor to the equation that sometimes remains unnoticed: culture. Research on European family structures has long highlighted the contrast between northern and southern Europe. In Mediterranean countries, family ties tend to be stronger and intergenerational support is more common. Staying at home into the late twenties is more socially accepted.
It is also important to contemplate education patterns. In parts of southern Europe, young people tend to study close to their hometowns, making relocation unnecessary. It is more common to stay at home during university, which potentially leads to delaying the transition to independent living until graduates find stable work, a long-term partner, or have enough savings to rent or buy.
Welfare systems in different areas of Europe also explain the divide. In Scandinavian countries, young adults benefit from stronger welfare support, including student grants, housing assistance, and unemployment protection, making it easier for young people to leave home even if they do not have a full-time job.
Whatever the case is in each country, the age at which young people leave home matters. It is not only a private milestone: it is linked to financial autonomy, has a deeper influence on society, and shapes a country’s demographic. Delayed independence contributes to postponed marriage, lower fertility rates, and postponed parenthood, all of which affect ageing societies across the continent.
If one thing is clear, is that flying the nest is not determined only by how expensive the housing market is. Young Europeans’ path to independence is also conditioned by cultural expectations, family life, job security, and welfare support. There is not a one-size-fits-all explanation: housing costs matter, but the expectations and culture of the country you grow up in matter too.