The FINANCIAL -- House prices, as measured by the House Price Index, rose by 4.0% in the euro area and by 4.5% in the EU in the first quarter of 2017 compared with the same quarter of the previous year.

These figures come from Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

Compared with the fourth quarter of 2016, house prices rose by 0.4% in the euro area and by 0.7% in the EU in the first quarter of 2017.

House price developments in the EU Member States

Among the Member States for which data are available, the highest annual increases in house prices in the first quarter of 2017 were recorded in the Czech Republic (+12.8%), Lithuania (+10.2%) and Latvia (+10.1%), while prices fell in Croatia (-0.4%) and Italy (-0.1%).

Compared with the previous quarter, the highest increases were recorded in the Czech Republic (+2.9%), Latvia (+2.8%) and Sweden (+2.5%), and the largest decreases in Malta (-5.4%), Slovakia (-2.4%) and Cyprus (-1.4%).