A new house price survey by the Global Property Guide (GBG) has revealed vast differences between the property markets across Europe last year. Latvia was the best performer in Europe during 2010 with apartments in Riga rising in value by 19%. GBG report: ‘The Latvian property market began recovering in Q4 2009, and by Q3 2010 apartment prices had risen a surprising 25% year-on-year. Another strong performance was Estonia where Tallinn apartments experienced 8% price rises during 2010. Tallinn apartment prices declined 31% during 2009. Estonia’s strong fourth quarter performance may have been due to anticipation of euro adoption, which occurred in January 2011.’

In contrast, GBG report that Ireland suffered the worst price decline of all countries surveyed in Europe and last year average house prices in Ireland fell by almost -12% to €191,776, compared to 2009’s price-decline of -13.5%. Irish prices have now fallen almost -40% from their end-2006 peak of €310,831.

The former Soviet Bloc countries also continue to suffer and Bulgarian prices fell by -9.5% last year after falling by -26% in 2009 (-33% in 2 years), Hungary fell by -6.7% last year after falling -15.6% in 2009 (-22% in 2 years) and Ukraine house prices fell by -9.5% last year after falling by -30% in 2009 (-37% in 2 years). Also, house prices in Lithuania fell last year by -6.8% after price falls of -29.3% in 2009 (-34% in 2 years), however, with such strong price growth for the two other Baltic countries last year, Lithuanian property prices are very unlikely to fall again this year and will probably rise in keeping with the region.