House prices, as measured by the House Price Index (HPI), fell by 2.2 per cent in the euro area and by 1.4 per cent in the EU in the first quarter of 2013 compared with the same quarter of the previous year, according to data published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU.
Compared with the fourth quarter of 2012, house prices fell by one per cent in the euro area and by 0.6 per cent in the EU in the first quarter of 2013.
Among the member states for which data is available, the highest annual increases in house prices in the first quarter of 2013 were recorded in Estonia (+7.7 per cent), Latvia (+7.2 per cent), Luxembourg (+4.3 per cent) and Sweden (+4.1 per cent), and the largest falls in Spain (-12.8 per cent), Hungary (-9.3 per cent), Portugal (-7.3 per cent) and the Netherlands (-7.2 per cent).
The highest quarterly increases in the first quarter of 2013 were recorded in Romania (+4.3 per cent), Estonia (+3.1 per cent), Latvia and Slovakia (both +2.3 per cent), and the largest falls in Spain (-5.1 per cent), Cyprus (-4.8 per cent), Hungary (-3.3 per cent) and Portugal (-3.2 per cent).