European property finals

IN a nod to the upcoming European Championships the international property experts CBRE have released their very own tournament results if the competition were property price growth rates rather than the beautiful game. 

The group has ranked the 16 participating nations, not for their footballing success but for price increases over the past five years, making very interesting reading. 

Turkey, perennial football underdogs come out top with a 91.3 per cent house price growth, while England reaches the ‘semi-finals’ at 26.8 per cent. Huge levels of foreign investment and a property bubble in London saw the UK’s biggest nation come in behind Iceland and Austria in second and third place respectively. 

Defending football champions Spain don’t fare so well when the goalposts are shifted to property prices. Despite improvement in the past year, the five-year span includes much of the recession years, and sees them in 15^th place due to a 29.5 per cent fall, behind football powerhouse Italy languishing in 13^th. 

An interesting feature of the table is that four of the top five countries, Turkey, Iceland, England and Sweden, are not members of the eurozone, and indeed not even the EU in the case of Iceland and Turkey.