Residential Property Prices in Central, Eastern and Southeastern European Countries: Stocktaking of Data and a View on New Developments in Data Availability

Residential property prices play an important role in many areas of economics and finance. They are used, for example, to determine the value of a major component of real wealth, as an indicator of financial stability risks stemming from residential property price gyrations, or to monitor inflation developments. However, the specific characteristics of residential property make primary data collection and index calculation difficult tasks. Against this background, the aim of this paper is to compare different residential property price indices in terms of price developments and methodologies for the ten Central, Eastern and Southeastern EU Member States (CESEE-10). In doing so, we focus on new developments in data availability for the CESEE-10, in particular the recent release of the Eurostat house price index (HPI). This index is a major step forward, providing improved EU-wide cross-country comparability of housing transaction prices. The comparison of the different data series with the new Eurostat index indicates some differences in the timing of local price peaks and the degree of price dynamics. Moreover, price movements diverged in some CESEE countries in the past two years. The comparison of the new Eurostat index to a price index that is purely based on asking prices exhibits a slightly lower correlation. Panel data research is set to benefit from Eurostat’s compilation of national house price indices, while time series analysis will continue to rely on the longer series of national statistics for the time being.