Despite the high prices of buying and renting property in Cyprus, they remain among the most competitive in the EU and the eurozone.
This is evidenced by comparative data recently published by Eurostat.
In particular, the agency notes that between 2010 and the second quarter of 2011, house purchase prices and rents in the EU countries showed similar dynamics, but later developed differently. While rents rose steadily, house purchase prices followed a more volatile pattern, combining periods of decline with sharp increases. Between 2010 and the third quarter of 2024, EU house prices increased by 54.1% and rents by 26%.
Comparing the third quarter of 2024 with 2010, house prices increased more than rents in the 20 EU countries for which data are available. In particular, house prices rose by 230% in Hungary and Estonia, by 181% in Lithuania, by 154% in Latvia, by 135% in the Czech Republic, by 135% in Austria, by 113% in Portugal, by 110% in Bulgaria and by 103% in Luxembourg. In Cyprus the increase was only 0.6%. This is the lowest rate in Europe. It is followed by Italy, the only country where house prices fell by 4.4% over the period. In Cyprus, the annualised year-on-year increase was 2.7% in the third quarter of 2024.
Among the EU countries for which data are available, 4 countries recorded a fall in annualised house purchase prices in the third quarter of 2024, while 22 countries recorded an annual increase. The largest falls were registered in France (-3.5%), Finland (-2.8%) and Luxembourg (-1.7%), while the highest increases were recorded in Bulgaria (+16.5%), Poland (+14.4%), Hungary (+13.4%), Croatia (+12.3%) and the Netherlands (+10.3%).
Over the same period, rents rose in 26 EU countries. The highest increases were recorded in Estonia (+216%), Lithuania (+183%), Ireland (+109%) and Hungary (+108%). Greece was the only country where rents fell, by 16.1%.
Eurostat said that the report used the house price index in combination with other macroeconomic statistics to produce derived indicators to analyse the dynamics of the housing market. It showed that there was a downward trend (or negative annual rate of change) between 2010 and 2014, reflecting the fact that house prices in the euro area either fell or rose less than the rate of inflation.
In 2015, house prices started to rise faster than inflation, and between 2016 and 2021, house prices increased by 2.9-5.5% more than inflation. In 2022, house prices rose slightly above inflation (+0.3%) and in 2023 they fell in line with high inflation, resulting in a significant 7.1% fall in annual deflated house prices. Between 2016 and 2021, house prices rose faster than inflation every year in at least 24 of the 27 EU countries. In 2022, house prices rose faster than inflation in 16 EU countries. In 2023, house prices rose less than inflation in 22 EU countries and more than inflation in five EU countries (Bulgaria, Greece, Croatia, Lithuania and Portugal). The main criteria that had the greatest influence on the final value of a property were its type (apartment, villa, maisonette, etc.), size and location.