EU house prices post biggest annual increase since 2007

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - House prices in the European Union rose by 6.1% in the first quarter of this year from the same period of 2020, their biggest gain since 2007, the bloc's statistics office said on Thursday.

The House Price Index for countries in the euro area rose by 5.8% in the first three months from a year earlier, its largest increase since the fourth quarter of 2006, Eurostat said in a statement.

Compared with the fourth quarter of 2020, house prices rose by 1.3% in the euro area and 1.7% in the EU in the first quarter of 2021.

Among EU member states for which data were available, the highest annual increases in house prices in the first quarter of 2021 were recorded in Luxembourg (+17.0%), Denmark (+15.3%), Lithuania (+12.0%), the Czech Republic (+11.9%) and the Netherlands (+11.3%), while prices fell only in Cyprus (-5.8%).

(Reporting by John Chalmers; Editing by Mark Potter)