Press release

The European Mortgage Federation (EMF) is pleased to announce the publication of the 2020 edition of Hypostat, the EMF-ECBC’s annual statistical publication encompassing data on recent developments in housing and mortgage markets in Europe and beyond.

The 2020 edition (covering data until end 2019) presents data and analyses for the 27 Member States of the European Union, as well as data from 13 additional countries (Australia, Canada, Brazil, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Russia, Singapore, South Korea,  Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States).

Besides the country specific data, key facts revealed by Hypostat 2020 include:

• House prices grew in most EU countries year-on-year in 2019 increasing by 5.9%, further decelerating from the 6.3% registered the previous year. Over the last 11 years most countries experienced a trough in their HPIs which principally occurred in 2013. Afterwards a general recovery emerged with heterogeneous dynamics in the different regions and countries marking their different position in the housing market cycle.

• Housing supply indicators in 2019 continued to pick up, with new building permits increasing by 30% since the trough of 2013, accounting for 0.7% of the total dwelling stock which is still below the 1% average from 2000-2007

• Total outstanding lending in the EU increased by 4.9% in 2019, the strongest growth figure since 2008 reaching nearly EUR 7.6 tn and over 49% of GDP (including the UK). Similarly, total gross lending grew by 9.4% reaching EUR 1.3 tn at the end of 2019.

• Interest rates resumed their decreasing trend, which was interrupted in 2018, and reached an average for the EU of 2.33% in 2019, the lowest since the first edition of Hypostat. The market mix for different mortgage interest rates in the EU remains highly fragmented, nevertheless, the share of variable interest rates continued to decrease in aggregate terms, amounting to less than 20% of the total.

Hypostat 2020 is the result of a collaborative effort by EMF national delegations and external experts.

Hypostat 2020 can be downloaded here. On Thursday 10 December 2020 at 10h00 CET contributing authors will present the key highlights and trends in the housing and mortgage marked during a virtual publication event. Further information will follow shortly.