TL;DR
Europe's biggest cities need new housing worth well over two percent of their entire existing stock, and Britain's numbers likely look as bad as Ireland's.
Everyone in Europe and the UK complains about not being able to afford a home. London, Paris and Madrid worst of all: too few houses, so young people can only get onto the property ladder with help from the bank of mum and dad. Bad luck if your parents don't have the money.
This has become a political problem, which is why the European Commission ran a study of housing investment needs. Its key chart asks: to close the gap, how much must be built, as a share of the housing already standing?
The dark-blue places are the ones short of homes
The greatest need is in Madrid and Barcelona, in Luxembourg and Vienna, and in Gothenburg and Stockholm. Ireland is more extreme still: easing the pressure there means building more than two percent of the existing stock.
The catch is that Britain has left the EU, so the study ignored it entirely. But Ireland's numbers suggest Britain's needs are just as high.
Britain has around 30 million homes, funding for 700,000 more, and a government ambition of 1.5 million. That works out to between 2.3 and 5 percent of the existing stock. By this map's measure, Britain would be dark blue too.
Curated from high-quality sources, with concise summaries and key takeaways.
