A wild ride across Europe’s very different housing markets.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Prices of existing homes continued to explode in a number of European countries, led by Portugal and Bulgaria with 18% year-over-year gains, followed by Slovakia and Croatia with 14% year-over-year gains, according to new data from Eurostat through Q2 2026. Prices in Hungary have soared by 307% since 2010.
But in several other countries, prices of existing homes have dropped from their highs reached years ago, including in the two biggest markets Germany and France. In Germany, prices have stabilized at Q2 2021 levels for the past five quarters. But prices in France have been deteriorating again for the past three quarters. In Finland, prices have dropped by 16.5% from their high in Q2 2022 – since Russia invaded Ukraine – to where they’d first been in 2009.
In Italy, prices have been soaring for years, but are still 9% below the levels of the prior housing bubble which imploded starting in 2011 during the Euro Debt Crisis.
Some of these countries are huge favorites for foreign buyers from other European countries, from the US, from China, and from Russia.
But Greece is missing from our wild ride across the 20 largest housing markets in Europe. Greece is large enough, but Eurostat, which gets its data from the statistical agencies of each country, notes that Greece does not provide “transaction-based” data for home prices; the Bank of Greece only provides “valuation prices.” So no chart for Greece.
The UK Brexited, and Eurostat stopped including UK data in 2020.
Norway is not a member of the EU, but is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), and is included in the Eurostat data.
Countries with prices below a peak in prior years and year of peak:
- Finland: -16.5% (Q2 2022).
- Germany: -10.0% (Q2 2022)
- Italy: -8.9% (Q2 2011)
- France: -7.4% (Q3 2022)
- Sweden: -3.6% (Q2 2022)
- Austria: -1.1% (Q3 2022)
Biggest price gains since 2010:
- Hungary: +307%
- Portugal: +197%
- Bulgaria: +177%
- Czechia: +177%
- Slovakia: +150%
- Croatia: +138%
- Austria: +134%
- Norway: +122%
- Poland: +122%
Double-digit year-over-year gains:
- Portugal: +18.0%
- Bulgaria: +17.6%
- Slovakia: +14.3%
- Croatia: +14.1%
- Spain: +12.9%
- Romania: +11.8%
- Hungary: 11.5%
- Czechia: +10.0%
Biggest quarter-over-quarter gains in Q2:
- Romania: +4.4%
- Bulgaria: +4.3%
- Spain: +3.7%
- Portugal: +3.6%
- Austria: +3.5%
- Croatia: +3.4%
- Denmark: +2.8%
- Czechia: +2.4%
Home price indices for the 20 largest EU/EEA countries:
Eurostat’s transaction-based data goes back to 2005 for some countries; for other countries, it goes back less far. But they’re depicted here on the same timeline going back to 2005 for easier comparison.
The vertical axis shows index values. The index was set at 100 for 2015 for each market. Since the index value is not a price in currency but just an index value (similar to the Case Shiller Index for the 20 cities in the US), it is not possible to compare the price levels across different markets. But it does show the changes of the prices within each market.
The little tables show three or four columns, from left to right: % change since 2010; quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) % change; year-over-year (YoY) % change; and % decline from the peak in prior years, for the six countries where that occurred.
| Germany, Prices of Existing Homes | |||
| since 2010 | QoQ | YoY | From peak |
| 85% | 0.3% | 0.5% | -10.0% |
| France, Prices of Existing Homes | |||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY | From peak |
| 29% | -0.9% | -0.8% | -7.4% |
| Italy, Prices of Existing Homes | |||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY | From peak |
| -6% | 1.6% | 3.8% | -8.9% |
| Spain, Prices of Existing Homes | ||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY |
| 40% | 3.7% | 12.9% |
| Netherlands, Prices of Existing Homes | ||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY |
| 97% | 0.9% | 4.2% |
| Poland, Prices of Existing Homes | ||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY |
| 122% | 1.6% | 6.1% |
| Ireland, Prices of Existing Homes | ||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY |
| 90% | 0.4% | 5.9% |
| Belgium, Prices of Existing Homes | ||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY |
| 65% | 0.2% | 3.9% |
| Sweden, Prices of Existing Homes | |||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY | From peak |
| 96% | 2.0% | 3.6% | -3.6% |
| Bulgaria, Prices of Existing Homes | ||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY |
| 177% | 4.3% | 17.6% |
| Norway, Prices of Existing Homes | ||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY |
| 122% | 1.9% | 3.7% |
| Austria, Prices of Existing Homes | |||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY | From peak |
| 134% | 3.5% | 5.2% | -1.1% |
| Denmark, Prices of Existing Homes | ||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY |
| 84% | 2.8% | 9.4% |
| Slovakia, Prices of Existing Homes | ||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY |
| 150% | 1.3% | 14.3% |
| Romania, Prices of Existing Homes | ||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY |
| 41% | 4.4% | 11.8% |
| Czech Republic, Prices of Existing Homes | ||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY |
| 177% | 2.4% | 10.0% |
| Finland, Prices of Existing Homes | |||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY | From peak |
| -3% | 0.4% | -3.5% | -16.5% |
| Hungary, Prices of Existing Homes | ||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY |
| 307% | -1.6% | 11.5% |
| Portugal, Prices of Existing Homes | ||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY |
| 197% | 3.6% | 18.0% |
| Croatia, Prices of Existing Homes | ||
| Since 2010 | QoQ | YoY |
| 138% | 3% | 14% |
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In 2026, the property market in Europe and globally is in a state of serious differentiation, with the largest decline in the number of deals (transactions) observed in Bulgaria, Croatia and Poland, as well as in countries with high sensitivity to lending such as the UK and Australia.
Property transactions in Bulgaria sank in the third quarter to their lowest level since at least 2005, as long as data is available on the Registry Agency website
For Bulgaria In economic terms, this phenomenon is called a “low-liquidity property bubble.” The number of transactions is decreasing because the mass buyer with normal incomes has already been completely squeezed out of the market. The few transactions that are concluded are made by people with very large savings or very high incomes. Since they buy expensive, luxury or premium properties, this artificially raises the average price of the statistics, even though the total number of sales is falling
These are also greenfield and high-priced deals concluded 2-3 years ago that are now being registered on Act 16
The decline in the number of deals is the first clear signal that buyers have hit the brakes. Historically, however, real estate prices react with a 6 to 12 month delay after the decline in deals. Sellers are still living with the feeling of the boom of previous years and refuse to accept the new reality that buyers can no longer afford these levels.
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“100% of this text is AI,” according to Pangram. I checked because the very first paragraph sounded like AI and I didn’t read further, but checked.
Pangram said: “This appears to be AI text that has been paraphrased or rewritten.”
This text was STOLEN by AI from other publications and presented by AI as its own, and you stole it from AI presented it as YOUR own.
People, this is one of the seven deadly sins of commenting.
Maybe Julian is an AI agent that was trying to hack into Wolfstreet and found the content so interesting that it commented?
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