New-build prices and pay in Zagreb over 25 years

Sources and methodology

The figures come from twelve editions of the Statistical Yearbook of the City of Zagreb and publications by the Croatian Bureau of Statistics. We thank everyone who collects, processes and publishes these data year after year.

Where the figures come from

Prices for 2001–2023 come from the yearbook; those for 2024–2026 come from the CBS release on prices of new dwellings sold. The CBS collects the data through its Quarterly Report on Prices of New Dwellings Sold, and the yearbook republishes the figures. The tables below the charts give the source edition and page for each figure.

The report is completed by legal entities that both build and sell apartments. The reported prices come from contracts for completed sales, not from property listings or asking prices.

How we checked the figures

We checked the figures for each year in three ways. The yearbooks cover overlapping periods, so data for almost every year appear in two to five editions, with matching figures. The yearbook also breaks the total price down into three components, which add up exactly in twenty-four of the years. Finally, we checked the kuna-to-euro conversion against years whose figures were published in both currencies.

What affects comparisons between years

From 2004 onwards, the figures include apartments sold through the subsidised housing programme (POS) at below-market prices. Their share of sales varies from year to year, but the effect on the average is substantial only in 2016. That year, 430 of the 1,570 apartments sold were in the programme, at an average of €1,080 per square metre. Including them gives an annual average of €1,355; excluding them gives €1,462 (2022 yearbook, Table 13.9, p. 223).

We use the published average, including the subsidised apartments, because they made up slightly more than a quarter of all apartments sold that year. Even if we exclude them, 2016 remains among the most affordable years relative to average pay: a square metre would cost 1.68 months of average net pay instead of 1.55, still well below the 2.31 months required in 2008.

In the other years for which a breakdown is available, the programme accounts for between half a per cent and eight per cent of apartments sold and changes the annual average price by less than four per cent. The yearbook first published a breakdown by seller in its 2022 edition, covering 2015 onwards.

Published figures can also be revised. The yearbook gave the 2024 price as €2,872; a later CBS release revised it to €2,917. We use the most recently published figure throughout.

For 2001–2024, we use the annual averages of monthly net pay published in the yearbook. For 2025 and 2026, we average the available quarterly figures for Zagreb released by the CBS. The two methods do not produce exactly the same result. For 2024, the only year with both measures, the yearbook gives €1,510, while the average of the four quarters is €1,530. The 1.3% difference does not affect the conclusion.

Median or average?

Annual median pay figures are not published for Zagreb. We estimated the median from the pay-band distributions published in the yearbook up to the 2017 edition. Our estimates for 2014, 2015 and 2016 were 86%, 87% and 86% of average pay respectively. For Croatia as a whole, the median was 85% of the average in December 2024.

We do not have comparable median pay figures covering the full period, so we have not included them in the tables.

Comparison with the wider housing market

To track the housing market as a whole, we use the house price index, which draws on Tax Administration records of sales of new and existing apartments and houses. The release dated 9 January 2026 uses 2015 as its base year. The CBS database (PC-Axis, Tables 1.4 and 1.5) carries the same index by quarter and by year back to 2002, with 2025 as the base year, so we rebased it to 2015 ourselves. On the old basis, prices in the City of Zagreb in the third quarter of 2025 were 2.57 times their 2015 level. In our new-build data, the average price per square metre for 2025 was twice the 2015 figure.

At the national level, the index distinguishes between new and existing homes. In the third quarter of 2025, new-home prices were 1.86 times their 2015 level, while existing-home prices were 2.39 times their 2015 level. This breakdown is not published for Zagreb.

For new builds, we know both the price per square metre and average monthly net pay, so we can divide one by the other. For the housing market as a whole, the published measure is a price index, not a price per square metre. Combined with pay data, the index tells us how prices have changed relative to pay, but not how many months’ pay a square metre costs. The yearbook has no table for the entire housing market, only one for sales of new-build apartments.

To measure the change in affordability, we divide the price multiplier by the pay multiplier for the same period. Between 2015 and 2025, average net pay in Zagreb rose to 1.94 times its 2015 level. New-build prices per square metre reached 2.00 times their 2015 level, and Zagreb’s house price index reached 2.57 times its 2015 level. Here we compare the index for the third quarter of 2025 with the annual average of monthly net pay. The index covers apartments and houses, with the value of the land included in the sale price. It measures price changes, not prices per square metre.

In our previous article, we tracked new-build asking prices to see how sellers change their asking price in the first two months after a property is listed.

Sources

Statistical Yearbook of the City of Zagreb, editions 2004–2025: prices in Table 13.12, or Table 13.8 in some editions; prices by seller in Table 13.9; pay in Table 7.1; and the distribution of pay by band in Table 7.3. Croatian Bureau of Statistics: Prices of New Dwellings Sold, First Half of 2026, reference GRAD-2026-4-1/1; Average Monthly Net and Gross Earnings of Persons in Paid Employment, by Counties, references RAD-2024-1-6/1 to /4 for the comparison of calculation methods, RAD-2025-1-6/1 to /4, and RAD-2026-1-6/1 and /2; House Price Indices, Third Quarter of 2025, reference CIJ-2025-2-1/3. PC-Axis database, Prices: House Price Indices, Tables 1.4 (by quarter) and 1.5 (by year), retrieved 26 October 2026.

The pay measure is average monthly net earnings per employee in legal entities, central government bodies and local government units. Employees in crafts and trades businesses and independent professional practices, as well as farmers, are not covered. All amounts are nominal and have not been adjusted for inflation.