Data published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, reveals that average property prices in the Eurozone area – the European countries where the euro is the official currency – fell by 2.2 per cent in the second quarter of 2013, compared to a year earlier.
Meanwhile, the data also shows that prices in the EU as a whole fell by a more moderate 1.3 per cent from a year earlier.
Among the EU Member States for which data is available, the highest annual increases in house prices in the second quarter of 2013 were recorded in Latvia (+8.8 per cent), Estonia (+8.1 per cent) and Luxembourg (+5.1 per cent). The largest falls were recorded in Croatia (-19.7 per cent), Spain (-10.6 per cent) and the Netherlands (-7.5 per cent).
Compared with the first quarter of 2013, however, house prices actually increased by 0.3 per cent in the Eurozone, and by 0.4 per cent in the EU during the second quarter of 2013.
The highest quarterly increases in the second quarter of 2013 were recorded in Latvia (+5.1 per cent), Estonia (+3.7 per cent) and Denmark (+3.1 per cent), while the largest falls were in Croatia (-6.5 per cent), the Netherlands (-2.0 per cent) and Hungary (-0.9 per cent).