Baltic house price increases among fastest in EU

  • 2015-01-21
  • from wire reports, LUXEMBOURG

House prices in all three Baltic countries increased by over 10 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2014, according to new data from the House Price Index. Estonia recorded the biggest increase, with house prices there jumping by 13.2 percent compared to the same period in 2013. This meant that it was behind only Ireland among EU countries for whom data was available. 

Latvia was in third place, tied with the United Kingdom, with an increase in house prices of 11.7 percent compared to the third quarter of 2013. It also scored the second-highest quarterly increase. Lithuania was ranked sixth overall; house prices in the southernmost Baltic country rising by 10.1 percent year-on-year. 

According to the data, house prices in the Eurozone rose by 0.6 percent from the second quarter of 2014, and by 1.1 percent in the EU as a whole. 

The largest falls in house prices over the preceding year were recorded in Slovenia (-5.4 percent), Italy (-3.8 percent) and Romania (-2.3 percent).