Europe: House Price to Income Ratio

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Luxembourg	6.18x
Belgium	7.06x
Austria	7.60x
Germany	8.96x
Denmark	9.75x
Turkey	10.27x
Netherlands	10.63x
Cyprus	11.99x
Ireland	12.37x
Slovenia	14.41x
Switzerland	14.93x
Hungary	15.02x
Finland	15.39x
Spain	15.52x
Malta	17.13x
Portugal	17.71x
Estonia	19.46x
Italy	19.66x
Slovak Rep.	21.14x
Croatia	21.26x
Latvia	21.66x
Lithuania	24.17x
Czech Rep.	26.02x
Greece	29.80x
France	30.54x
Macedonia	32.92x
Poland	33.05x
Bulgaria	37.51x
UK	45.95x
Romania	53.38x
Ukraine	93.14x
Montenegro	136.24x
Russia	139.93x

Europe: House price to income ratio

The house price to income ratio is the ratio of the cost of a typical upscale housing unit of 100 square metres, compared to the countrys GDP per capita. Normally this ratio will be much higher in low income countries than in high income countries.

The formula is: (Price per square metre / GDP per capita)*100. The house price to income ratios published by the Global Property Guide are based on the Global Property Guides own proprietary in-house research, but we use the IMFs GDP per capita figures.

European statistics. European house price and other economic statistics vary in quality. It is often a surprise to non-Europeans to discover that swathes of this rich, highly developed continent are not covered by good housing statistics.

Northern European countries have generally good house price time-series. In particular, all the Scandinavian countries generate excellent house price statistics. In the Baltics the situation is improving rapidly. Latvia generates an official annual house price time-series, and the realtor Latio publishes a monthly index. Lithuania has no official house price or rents time-series, but the firm Inreal publishes annual prices and rents for Vilnius for a few years. Estonia has high-quality housing statistics, generated by the Statistical Office of Estonia (SOE). Data on house prices, house sales and construction activities, as well as general economics statistics are all available from the SOE.

Central Europe is mixed. German house price statistics are weak. France has very good statistics, the Netherlands has good data, Belgium and Austria have acceptable data. Spain has made giant strides, Portugal is weaker.

Southern Europe tends to have weak statistical data. There is a particular lack of housing statistics in Italy, Greece, and Turkey (though Italy has some private, for-sale, data generators).

Statistics in Eastern Europe are weak. Efforts are being made to change this, for instance Bulgaria began publishing a house price time-series in 2006. Aside from this, the Czech Republic has an official index, and in Poland, REAS Konsulting produces a for-sale index.