CYPRUS HOUSE PRICES DOWN BY 3%, RENTS BY 4.8% SINCE 2010

 Cyprus Mail 8 October 2020 - by Annette Chrysostomou

Cyprus is one of the few EU countries where both house prices and rents decreased over the period from 2010 until the second quarter of 2020, Eurostat reported on Thursday.

Decreases in house prices were observed in four countries, Greece (-31.0 per cent), Italy (-13.2 per cent), Spain (-5.6 per cent) and Cyprus (-3.0 per cent).

House prices increased in 23 EU member states, with the highest rises in Estonia (+100.5 per cent), Luxembourg (+85.8 per cent), Latvia (+77.3 per cent) and Austria (+75.9 per cent).

Rents decreased in only two countries, Greece (-25.2 per cent) and Cyprus (-4.8 per cent).

They increased in 25 EU member states, with the highest rises in Estonia (+135.8 per cent), Lithuania (+105.4 per cent) and Ireland (+62.3 per cent).

Overall, rents increased by 14.2 per cent and house prices by 25.0 per cent in the EU.

Between 2010 and the second quarter of 2011, house prices and rents in the EU27 followed similar paths. Then, since the third quarter of 2011, they have followed very different paths: while rents increased steadily throughout the period up to the second quarter of 2020, house prices have fluctuated significantly.

After a sharp decline between the second quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2013, house prices remained more or less stable between 2013 and 2014. Then, there was a rapid rise in early 2015, since when house prices have increased at a much faster pace than rents.