Overall residential property prices in Croatia increased by 3.2 percent in Q4 2017 compared with the previous quarter, or 7.6 percent up from Q4 2016, according to data released by the state statistics bureau on Thursday.

Newly-built residential properties increased in price by an average of 1 percent from Q3 2017 and 4.1 percent in Q4 2016. Prices of existing residential properties rose by 3.6 percent on average compared Q3 2017 and by 8.3 percent from Q4 2016.

By region, prices in Zagreb in Q4 2017 were 3.8 percent up quarter-on-quarter, while in the Adriatic region they rose by 3 percent. Elsewhere in the country prices inched up by 2.1 percent.

House prices, as measured by the House Price Index tracked by Eurostat, rose by 4.2 percent in the euro zone countries, and by 4.5 percent in the EU overall in the Q4 2017 compared with the same quarter of the previous year.

Compared with the Q3 2017, house prices rose slightly by 0.9 percent in the euro zone and by 0.7 percent in the EU in Q4 2017.

Among EU member states for which real estate prices data is available, the highest year-on-year increases in house prices in Q4 2017 were recorded in Ireland (11.8 percent), Portugal (10.5 percent) and Slovenia (10.0 percent), while prices inched down only in Italy, by 0.3 percent.

Compared with the previous quarter, the highest average price hikes were recorded in Slovenia (by 3.7 percent), Croatia (3.2 percent) and Cyprus (2.7 percent). At the ame time, prices slipped in Sweden (by 2.8 percent), Denmark (1.7 percent), Belgium (0.4 percent) and Finland (0.3 percent).