The grand duchy had the 5th lowest differential out of 39 European countries in a study of flat prices published by Imovirtual, a real estate listings website, on 9 August.

Imovirtual stated:

“Wherever you go, the housing market is becoming harder to enter for new buyers. Across all European countries, this gets worse when you look exclusively at property in capital cities. On average the price per square meter of property is 115% more expensive than the country average.”

However, the figure in the grand duchy was only 44.22%.

The property site did not provide an analysis of why certain countries have a significantly lower spread than others, but Delano would speculate that in Luxembourg’s case the country’s geographic size plays a determining role.

According to Imovirtual, the price difference between the capital and the rest of the country was only smaller in the cases of Athens/Greece (18.74% more expensive), Podgorica/Montenegro (27.27%), Brussels/Belgium (29.91%) and Reykjavik/Iceland (34.17%).

The largest gaps were found in Moscow/Russia (446.42%), London/UK (353.85%), Rome/Italy (233.57%), Kiev/Ukraine (188.21%) and Lisbon/Portugal (183.84%).

Imovirtual said: “Switzerland was excluded due to insufficient data”. Graphic: Imovirtual

Imovirtual is a Portuguese property site ultimately owned by the South African e-commerce conglomerate Naspers. The firm said it developed the table using data on one- and three-bedroom apartments from the crowdsourced price reporting site Numbeo.