House prices in the EU up 11% since 2010 – Eurostat
House prices rose by 11 per cent in the European Union between 2010 and 2017 and six per cent in the euro area, the EU’s statistics body Eurostat said on July 10.
According to Eurostat, the price of housing – including purchases of both new-build and existing houses and flats – has fluctuated significantly in the EU since 2006.
After recording annual growth rates of around eight per cent in 2006 and 2007, house prices fell by four per cent as a result of the global financial crisis in 2009 and did not start growing again until 2014.
Since 2010, the highest increases in house prices were recorded in Estonia (73 per cent), Sweden (56 per cent), Austria (49 per cent), Latvia (47 per cent) and Luxembourg (40 per cent), and the largest decreases in Spain (-17 per cent), Italy (-15 per cent) and Cyprus (-9 per cent).
Eurostat did not give a figure for Bulgaria’s house prices increase since 2010, but its annual figures showed that the country’s property market was among those affected the most by the crisis – after recording increases of 29 per cent in 2007 and 25 per cent in 2008, at the height of the property boom in the country, prices crashed by 20 per cent in 2009, followed by a further 10 per cent in 2010.
After several years during which price dynamics in Bulgaria were broadly identical to the EU as a whole, the past two years saw house prices in the country grow at a faster pace than the EU average – seven per cent in 2016 and 8.7 per cent in 2017, compared to EU averages of 4.3 per cent and 4.4 per cent, respectively.
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