Newsroom
If you’re renting in Cyprus, you’re not imagining it; it really is getting more expensive year after year. New figures from Eurostat confirm that rents on the island jumped by 4.6% in 2024 compared to the previous year, continuing a steady upward trend that’s been going on since 2017.
Meanwhile, house prices in Cyprus rose by 2.3% over the same 12-month period but dipped slightly compared to the previous quarter, a sign that while the housing market isn’t cooling dramatically, it’s certainly not heating up like in much of the EU.
The takeaway? Owning a home in Cyprus may not cost much more than it did a decade ago, but renting definitely does.
Across the European Union, house prices increased by 4.9% in the last quarter of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, and rents climbed by 3.2%. So Cyprus is running behind on home price growth, but ahead of the curve when it comes to rising rents.
In fact, Cyprus has seen a consistent climb in rental prices since 2017, when the increase was a modest 0.8%. Since then, rents have ticked up each year:
+2.5% in 2018,
+3.4% in 2019,
+2.5% in 2020,
+1.9% in 2021,
+3.0% in 2022,
+4.5% in 2023,
and now +4.6% in 2024.
For tenants across the island, especially in high-demand areas like Nicosia, Limassol, and Larnaca, the steady rise in rent has become a source of financial pressure, particularly for young people, students, and low- to middle-income families.
Cyprus house prices: flatlining since 2010
If you zoom out to the longer-term picture, Cyprus stands out for a different reason: house prices have barely budged since 2010. That might sound like good news for prospective buyers, but it also reflects the slow recovery of the property market after the 2013 financial crisis.
Compare that to countries like Hungary and Estonia, where house prices more than tripled since 2010. Lithuania, Latvia, Czechia, and even Portugal also saw housing values at least double over the same period.
Even rent prices have surged across most of Europe, up by 26.7% EU-wide since 2010, while Cyprus sits somewhere in the middle. Meanwhile, Greece was the only EU country where rents actually dropped (-13%).
So while Cypriots haven’t seen the wild housing price hikes of other countries, renters are feeling the squeeze, and first-time buyers are still navigating high borrowing costs and stagnant wage growth.
The takeaway? Owning a home in Cyprus may not cost much more than it did a decade ago, but renting definitely does. And with mortgage interest rates still above the EU average, many are stuck in between: unable to buy, but paying more to rent.
