House prices and rents continued to climb across the European Union in the first quarter of 2025, according to data released today by Eurostat. Between January and March, house prices rose by 5.7% compared to the same period in 2024, while rents increased by 3.2%. On a quarterly basis, house prices were up by 1.4% and rents by 0.9% compared with the fourth quarter of 2024. Since 2010, house prices in the EU have risen by a cumulative 57.9%, while rents have grown by 27.8%. Although rents have shown steady growth over the past 15 years, house prices have experienced more pronounced fluctuations, with a sharp surge between early 2015 and the third quarter of 2022, a brief dip and period of stabilization, followed by renewed growth since 2024. Over the period from 2010 to the first quarter of 2025, house prices increased more than rents in 21 of the 26 EU member states for which data are available. The most significant gains were recorded in Hungary, where house prices surged by 260%, and in Estonia, where they rose by 238%. House prices at least doubled in nine other countries, including Lithuania (+194%), Latvia (+154%), Czechia (+147%), Portugal (+130%), Bulgaria (+125%), Austria (+113%), Luxembourg and Poland (both +102%), and Slovakia (+100%). Italy was the only EU country to see a decline in house prices over this period, with a drop of 4%. During the same timeframe, rents increased in all 26 EU countries except Greece, where they fell by 11%. The strongest rises in rental costs were recorded in Estonia (+220%), Lithuania (+184%), Hungary (+124%), and Ireland (+115%). Eurostat’s full dataset and further details can be accessed via the Statistics Explained article on housing price statistics.