Where does the real estate market statistics data come from?
Transaction data is submitted by notaries, who are required to submit a transaction certificate to the cadastral registrar within ten days of certifying the transfer of a property or a notional part thereof. Transaction certificates are submitted electronically.
After receiving the data, the Land and Spatial Development Board performs an initial check and publishes monthly and quarterly overviews by the 20th day of the following month at the latest. The transaction database contains transaction data from 1996 onwards.
Between January 1, 2002, and July 19, 2003, only transactions with a state purchase right that were located or extended into a construction prohibition zone or protected area were received. 07.2003, only transactions with state preemptive rights were received, which were located or extended into a construction prohibition zone or protected area and included immovable property containing a protected natural object or the habitat of a category I protected species.
Access to transaction data
Access to transaction data is restricted by Section 6 of the Land Registry Act, which means that statistical information on individual transactions is not available – data on the value of transactions is only displayed if at least five transactions have taken place.
When using and publishing data, please refer to or otherwise indicate the source of the data - Land and Spatial Development Board, transaction database.
Real estate price statistics query
- Query reports are not official extracts, and the results may change as a result of data corrections.
- The date of the query is added to the extracts to avoid possible misunderstandings about different results for the same period related to data corrections and amendments.
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The more complex aspects of the query are explained in the query guide.
Real estate price indices
Real estate price indices are calculated with the aim of creating an information tool based on actual transactions that better characterizes the pure change in real estate market prices than average transaction prices can.
Real estate price indexing is based on a transaction database that contains data on all real estate transfer transactions. The indices are calculated as quarterly values starting from the third quarter of 2003, which is also the base period for the indices and is assigned an index value of 1.
Unlike the transaction database price statistics query environment, where summary data on real estate transactions is publicly available, the indices are based on detailed transaction data.
The sample has been significantly cleaned up with the aim of including only transfers that meet the conditions of a free market transaction in the analysis.
To this end, transactions between relatives and other related parties, transactions where the transferor is a local government, lease termination agreements, and, in the case of apartment ownership, sales of notional parts of apartments, for example, have been removed from the collection of purchase and sale transactions.
The real estate price index is compiled from the price indices of apartment ownership, developed residential land, and undeveloped land, with the aim of providing a more comprehensive description of price dynamics in the real estate market as a whole.
The following fixed weights have been assigned to the base indices in the calculation of the index, which approximately correspond to the relative importance of the sectors in the market:
- apartment ownerships - 55%;
- undeveloped land - 30%;
- developed residential land - 15%.
The price index for undeveloped land is based on a hedonic regression of all transactions involving undeveloped immovable property that meet the conditions of a free market transaction.
The following fixed weightings have been set in the calculation for intended uses and agricultural land suitability, which correspond approximately to the average distribution of undeveloped land transactions:
- residential land - 30%;
- agricultural land, arable land - 10%;
- agricultural land, forest land - 30%;
- agricultural land, other/multiple types of land - 20%;
- other/multiple intended uses - 10%.
The apartment ownership price index is a price index based on hedonic regression, which describes the dynamics of market prices for apartment ownership used as living space on the Estonian market.
The index model includes purchase and sale transactions of apartment ownerships used as living space in 17 Estonian cities (all county centers, Kohtla-Järve, and Narva). In addition to the location of the apartment, the model also takes into account the floor space of the apartment.
The price index for developed residential land is a price index based on regression of repeat sales. The index observes changes in transaction values between repeat sales of developed residential land properties.
In addition to removing non-market transactions, which is done for all indices, transactions with very low prices or very short intervals have been removed from the model in the analysis of repeat sales.
Transaction pairs with very large price changes have also been removed or given a lower weighting – in such cases, the transaction(s) are probably not free market transactions, or the price change is not due solely to market forces, but to changes in the property, for example.
Due to the small number and/or quality of transactions, it is not possible to calculate the built-up residential land index for each quarter.
Last updated: 06.11.2025
