Malta fared among the countries with skyrocketing property prices in the last quarter of 2014 – a total 11%. The highest prices were recorded in Ireland - 16.3%. Sweden trails Malta with 10.4%.

This emerges from the latest Eurostat statistics on house prices in the euro area and the EU, as measured by the House Price Index (HPI). Prices rose by 1.1% in the euro area and by 2.6% in the EU in the fourth quarter of 2014 compared with the same quarter of the previous year.

House price developments in the EU Member States

Other countries whose property prices are rather high are Estonia (+10.1%) and the United Kingdom (+10.0%). The largest drops in prices recorded, on the other hand, were in countries such as Slovenia (-4.4%), Cyprus (-3.3%), Latvia (-3.2%) and Italy (-2.9%).

The highest quarterly increases – when compared to previous quarters - were recorded in Malta once again (+4.6%), Ireland (+3.8%), Slovakia (+2.1%) and Luxembourg (+2.0%), and the largest falls in Latvia (-10.2%), Lithuania (-4.3%) and Cyprus (-3.0%).