Cyprus, Croatia see property prices slump in 4Q13

House prices, as measured by the House Price Index (HPI), fell by 1.4% in the euro area and by 0.1% in the EU28 during the fourth quarter of 2013 compared with the same quarter of the previous year, according to data published by Eurostat.
Among the EU member states, the largest annual falls in house prices in the fourth quarter of 2013 were recorded in Croatia (-14.4%), Cyprus (-9.4%) and Spain (-6.3%), and the highest increases in Estonia (+15.6%), Latvia (+7.9%) and Sweden (+7.0%).
The largest quarterly falls were recorded in Hungary (-1.8%), Spain (-1.3%), Denmark and Italy (both -1.2%), and the highest increases in Latvia (+2.7%), Estonia and Lithuania (both +2.6%) and Ireland (+2.5%).
Compared with the third quarter of 2013, house prices fell by 0.7% in the euro area and by 0.3% in the EU in the fourth quarter of 2013. Quarter-on-quarter, Cyprus property prices fell 1.1% in the final quarter, having already receded -0.4%, -3.4% and -4.8% in previous quarters, respectively.