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The cost of buying a flat more than doubled in the decade to 2019, helping make Luxembourg the most expensive place to buy or rent a home in Deloitte’s survey of 23 European countries. Library picture: Romain Gamba/Maison Moderne 

That’s according to a survey of 23 European countries conducted by the consultancy Deloitte.

The paper was published by the advisory firm’s Dutch operations, “using data collected by individual Deloitte offices in the participating countries,” the authors wrote. Deloitte released the 9th edition of its “Property Index: Overview of European Residential Markets” report on 9 July.

Housing inflation

The consulting firm said that average apartment prices in Luxembourg City more than doubled between 2010 and 2019, from roughly €4,400 to €9,000 per square metre.

According to the Deloitte report:

“This increase in residential prices was quite homogenous across the different segments (older and new dwellings), but with a much stronger increase in urban areas than in rural areas (i.e. North and West of the country). This suggests that land prices have affected heavily the price of new residential developments and consequently existing residential assets as well.

 

“Between Q4 2018 and Q4 2019, Luxembourgish residential prices have increased by 11% in average. Prices have increased by 12.1% for existing apartments, by 12.4% for apartments under construction and by 9.1% for existing houses.”

New flat prices

“Luxembourg took the position of the most expensive country in terms of new apartment prices in 2019,” the Deloitte report stated. New flats cost an average of €7,145 per square metre, markedly ahead of France (€4,523), Austria (€4,176), Norway and (€4,120). Luxembourg was likewise pricier than Germany (€3,727) and Belgium (€2,583). The lowest new apartment sale prices in the study were observed in Hungary (€1,475), Serbia €1,249, Portugal €1,162, Bosnia and Herzegovina (€849) and Bulgaria (€550).

“Paris was again the most expensive city in our publication in terms of transaction prices of new dwellings in 2019”, at €12,863 per square metre, Deloitte said. The French capital was dearer than Tel Aviv (€9,769) and Luxembourg City (€9,565).

All home sales

On the other hand, the grand duchy had the highest price per square metre across all types of new and existing homes: the average transaction price for new dwellings was €7,145 and for existing properties was €6,057.

Rent

The grand duchy’s capital “was the most expensive city in terms of monthly rent” at €30.71 per square metre. Luxembourg City was more expensive than Paris (€28.30), inner London (€27), Oslo (€25.80) and Dublin (€25).

Housing stock

Luxembourg equally topped Deloitte’s index of number of completed dwellings per 1,000 residents last year (11.65), ahead of France (6.7), Norway (5.66) and Israel (5.54).

In contrast, Luxembourg had one of the lowest number of dwellings per 1,000 people in the survey (390.6), well behind Portugal and Italy (both more than 580) at the top of the table, as well as France (531.9), Germany (511.8) and Belgium (480.6).