Eurostat has published a first-time a report on the evolution of house prices. This new euro-indicator is in response to the demand for comparable and reliable statistics on national, euro area and EU housing markets.

House price evolution is important for economic and monetary policy purposes, in particular monitoring of macroeconomic imbalances and of risk exposure of the financial sector. It is also relevant for households, as it measures changes in the prices of the most important component of households’ expenditure and wealth.

House prices, as measured by the House Price Index (HPI), fell by 2.5% in the euro area and by 1.9% in the EU in the third quarter of 2012 compared with the same quarter of the previous year, according to data published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

Compared with the second quarter of 2012, house prices fell by 0.7% in the euro area and by 0.4% in the EU in the third quarter of 2012.

House price developments in the EU Member States

Among the Member States for which data was available, the highest annual increases in house prices in the third quarter of 2012 were recorded in Estonia (+8.4%), Luxembourg (+7.1%) and Finland (+2.1%), and the largest falls in Spain (-15.2%), Ireland (-9.6%), the Netherlands (-8.7%) and Portugal (-7.7%), Malta stood at 0.8%.

The highest quarterly increases in the third quarter of 2012 were recorded in Estonia (+2.6%), Latvia (+2.3%), the United Kingdom (+1.7%) and Ireland (+1.6%), and the largest falls in Romania (-4.2%), the Netherlands (-3.9%) and Spain (-3.7%), Malta stood at 0.3%.

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