According to the available data, prices of housing only increased at a faster pace at the annual level in the first quarter of 2008, when they grew by 11.8%.

New residential properties contributed the most to the annual and quarterly price hikes. At the annual level, the prices of new housing increased by 12.2%; at the quarterly level they soared 9.4%.

In comparison, the prices of used homes rose by 9.6% at the yearly level and by 2.8% at the quarterly level, the Statistics office said.

Broken down to types of residential property, the highest yearly rise was recorded in prices of new houses (15.7%), followed by used flats in Ljubljana (14.8%) and new flats nationwide (11.5%).

Meanwhile, a record low number of transactions was recorded in new residential properties (632) in 2017, but the total number of transactions reached an all-time high at 10,788.

In the fourth quarter alone, 2,718 homes were sold, of which only 144 were new properties. The highest hikes were recorded in the prices of new flats (9.5%) and new houses (8.5%).