Did rents in Croatia really rise 22%? What Eurostat actually measures

Where 22% comes from

Both Eurostat news items compare a quarter with the average of the whole of 2025, not with the same quarter a year earlier. The 2025 average holds seven months before the jump and five from the jump on, so a comparison with it shows only part of the jump.

Against the same quarter a year earlier the rise would be 39.1% for the first and 40.1% for the second quarter of 2026 (our calculation). Croatia had the EU's highest rise in the first quarter; in the second it was second, behind Romania (41.2%), whose rent index also jumped in a single month, in April 2026.

What the index measures

• The rents tenants actually pay for the home they live in (their main residence), social and market, under new and existing leases, for the whole of Croatia.
• No utilities (water, refuse, electricity, gas or heating), no owners living in their own homes and no tourist lets.
• Change, not price: the index can't give a rent in euros or a price per square metre.

In Croatia it's a small item: 8.52‰ of the harmonised consumer price index (HICP) basket in 2025, against 50.84‰ in the EU. 91% of people live in a flat or house they own (European Commission).

According to the metadata DZS (Croatia's statistics office) supplies to Eurostat, social rent prices come from administrative data, and for market rents DZS web-scrapes prices from websites. Eurostat classes the whole item for Croatia as a price set by public authorities. The same metadata give social rents an “expenditure share of 70%”; the term isn't defined, so we don't read more into it.

So the index can't tell us how much market rents in Zagreb rose: the public data don't separate social rents from market rents.

What caused the jump

Neither DZS nor Eurostat gives a cause in the publications we checked. DZS's release for August 2025 records that the group “housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels” had the largest monthly rise in the consumer price index, but says nothing about rents. The European Commission's 2026 housing report for Croatia only confirms that the acceleration in 2025 is due to a monthly increase of 35% in August.

On 12 October 2026 Euronews reported an explanation from the institution providing the data (not named): a City of Zagreb decision to raise rents in the social-rent category. That is a media report; we found no official text with that explanation. Euronews

What it means for tenants

For market rents in Zagreb we track asking prices from listings: the median by neighbourhood, by flat size and per square metre. That is a different measure from Eurostat's index: the median asking price in Zagreb listings, not an index of how social and market rents change across Croatia. The two numbers shouldn't be compared directly.