Bulgarian housing prices rise for 5th straight year

The EU's statistics agency Eurostat reports that Bulgarian housing prices rose 6.6 percent in 2018, the fifth consecutive year of price growth. Bulgarian housing inflation was more rapid than the European average, which came in at just 4.4 percent, but the results illustrate the strong nature of the recovery across the region since the global financial crisis of 2008. Eurostat figures show consistent growth since 2014, when Bulgaria's average increase in residential prices was 1.4 percent. This rose to 2.8 percent in 2015 and to 7 percent by 2016. In the European Union as a whole, prices rose 15 percent between 2010 and 2018, which the biggest jumps experienced in Estonia, Latvia, Austria, Sweden and Luxembourg. The housing markets of Italy, Spain and Cyprus were the worst performers in the region.