Buying a home in Albania is 76% more expensive relative to income than ten years ago

Buying a home today is much harder for an individual, a family or a young person than it was five or ten years ago. Apartment prices have risen much faster than household incomes, putting the possibility of buying one with savings earned through work further and further out of reach.

To own an apartment, a family now needs more years of work or a large loan.

A calculation by “Monitor” shows that, from 2015 to 2025, the ratio of house prices to disposable income per person in Albania rose by 76.3%.

In other words, buying the same home today requires about 76% more annual income than it did in 2015.

If an apartment cost the equivalent of ten years’ income a decade ago, it would now cost the equivalent of about 17.6 years’ income. This example assumes that all of that income is spent on the home.

“Monitor” calculated this measure using the method Eurostat employs to track changes in the ratio between house prices and household income.

For Albania, gross household disposable income published by INSTAT was divided by the average population for each year, using the series revised after the 2023 Census.

INSTAT data show that gross disposable income per person rose from about 429,000 lek in 2015 to 765,000 lek in 2025, an increase of 78.4%.

This measure includes wages as well as other sources of household income, as it takes into account the distribution and redistribution of income in the economy.

Changes in prices were measured using the Bank of Albania’s Fischer index, which is based on a real estate market survey.

The average of the six-monthly figures shows a 214.4% rise in the house price index from 2015 to 2025. Thus, while home prices have more than tripled, disposable income per person has risen by about 78%.

The calculation compares nominal income with nominal house prices. The result shows how affordability changed over the period; it does not include other purchase expenses, interest or the cost of borrowing.

In Tirana, prices have more than doubled in ten years

Figures for apartments in the capital make the scale of the price increase clearer. According to Key Data, a square metre of apartment space in Tirana sold for an average of about 860 euros in 2015.

The average price reached 1,038 euros per square metre in 2020 and about 1,950 euros in 2025. The year 2025 ended at close to 2,100 euros per square metre, up from about 1,800 euros at its start.

The increase continued into the first quarter, when the price reached 2,140 euros per square metre.

Compared with five years earlier, the average price of apartments in Tirana has risen by about 88%; compared with 2015, it has risen by 127%.

At these average prices, a 100-square-metre apartment would have cost about 86,000 euros in 2015, 104,000 euros in 2020 and 195,000 euros in 2025. For the same area, the cost today is about 109,000 euros higher than it was ten years ago.

Albania’s increase exceeds that of every EU country

House prices relative to income have risen in other countries too, but not everywhere at the same pace. According to Eurostat, this ratio was 6.8% higher in the European Union in 2025 than in 2015. It rose in 17 EU countries and fell in ten others.

Portugal led the EU countries with an increase of 60.8%. It was followed by the Netherlands at 34.3%, Hungary at 26.5%, Czechia at 25.8% and Spain at 24.5%. By contrast, the ratio fell by 42.8% in Romania, 25.2% in Finland and 16.2% in Bulgaria.

The 76.3% increase calculated by “Monitor” for Albania is higher than Portugal’s figure. In Portugal, the rapid rise in house prices has been influenced by strong growth in tourism.

This comparison remains indicative because Albania is not included in Eurostat’s harmonised statistics. The Albanian measure uses the Bank of Albania’s Fischer index and gross household disposable income per person.

Eurostat, meanwhile, uses the harmonised house price index and adjusted gross disposable income per person.

The measure does not establish which country has the most expensive homes. It tracks how much their prices have changed relative to household income over the period examined.