Residential property price statistics for the euro area

Residential property price statistics for the euro area and selected EU countries Martin Eiglsperger (European Central Bank)

Since 2001, the ECB has gradually expanded its regular collection of non-harmonised residential property price statistics from national sources in the EU, in co-operation with the EU National Central Banks. The data are used both for country analyses and the monitoring of euro area wide developments. The paper explains the main features of the national and euro area data, in particular its comparability, frequency and timeliness. Progress for euro area data has been recently made by releasing semi-annual estimates, and by expanding the availability of back data. Significant further improvements are desirable and would require major improvements of residential property price statistics in EU countries. Work towards improved statistics is underway, most prominently by national statistical institutes in the context of the HICP pilot project on owner-occupied housing. Furthermore, the paper also refers to residential property price data that have been collected recently from the new EU Member States.