House prices in the EU have decreased by 1.1 per cent in the second quarter of 2023, indicating that buying houses in the region could come at a lower cost if they were bought in April, May and June of 2023, compared to the same time last year.
On the other hand, rents increased by three percentage points during the same period, indicating Europeans’ interest in renting their accommodation rather than purchasing real estate.
House prices and rents in the EU followed a comparable increasing path between 2010 and the second quarter of 2011. After this quarter, house prices and rents evolved differently. While rents increased steadily throughout this period up to the second quarter of 2023, house prices fluctuated considerably.
Except for a sharp decline recorded in the second quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2013, house prices remained relatively stable between 2013 and 2014 but rose exponentially in 2015 and increased faster than rents until the second quarter of 2022. This could be related to Golden Visa Programmes across Europe, which enable foreign investors to obtain citizenship of a respective country by making a certain amount of investment in real estate.
However, recently, some of these countries, namely Portugal, have announced an end to its Golden Visa Programmes, and as a result, in the third quarter of 2022, house prices kept increasing at the same pace as rents – around 0.7 per cent compared with the second quarter of 2022.
Compared to the last three months of 2022, house prices fell for two quarters in a row before experiencing a small rise in the second quarter of 2023.
House Prices in Baltic Countries, Central Europe & Hungary More Than Doubled in Last 12 Years
House prices in Europe increased by 46 per cent and rents by 21 per cent between 2010 and 2023. In general, house prices in 20 out of 27, have increased more than rents during this period.
Countries where house prices increased the most between 2010 and 2023, include Estonia, where a 211 per cent increase was recorded, followed by Hungary (180 per cent) and Lithuania (152 per cent). This means that a house that cost around EUR100,000 in 2010, could have its price peaking to EUR211,000 in April of 2023.
House prices increased in this period also in countries like Latvia (144 per cent), Czechia (122 per cent), Luxembourg and Austria (both 120 per cent).
