European | News

New housing has become more expensive in most European countries over the last years, including 2019. Among 23 countries participating in Deloitte Property Index Study, 20 showed growth in prices of new dwellings and only three of them saw a price decrease. Experts in the residential real estate market expected the growth trend to continue in 2020, but they became less optimistic in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, in almost half of participating countries, the residential market is expected to stagnate this year in terms of price and experts in only six countries have positive expectations.

More than half of the European consumers (52%) plan to postpone buying a new vehicle and they will keep their current one longer than originally intended in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Deloitte State of Consumer Tracker, with respondents from Poland being the most cautious regarding the purchasing behavior (68%), followed by the Irish (61%) and the Spanish (60%). At the opposite end, only 32% of the Dutch have postponed their plans to buy a new vehicle. The survey was conducted on 18,000 respondents from 18 countries, including nine European states – Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and United Kingdom -, in the second half of June 2020.