Housing permits are back near the 2007 peak.

Almost back at the 2007 peak

In the twelve months to May 2026, permits were issued for 19,665 dwelling units, the flats and houses that owners and developers are now allowed to build. The highest figure in the series is 20,486, for the twelve months to December 2007.

After that came seven years of decline in a row, through the global financial crisis and the Cypriot banking crisis of 2013. By December 2014 the figure was down to 2,855, one seventh of the peak. It has grown in most years since, and much faster from 2023 onwards.

January to May, year by year

The first five months of 2026 brought permits for 8,978 units, 64% more than a year earlier. That is the highest January–May in the series, above the 8,701 of 2007.

Flats instead of houses

In 2005–2007, single houses and apartment blocks each accounted for seven to nine thousand units a year. In 2025 apartment blocks accounted for 10,791 units and single houses for 3,943. In the first five months of 2026, flats made up 74% of all permitted units.

Houses have not come back. At the low point in 2014 there were 1,599 of them, last year 3,943, about half the level before the crisis.

Prices have risen faster than building costs

CYSTAT's House Price Index "measures changes in the selling prices of dwellings (including the value of land) purchased by households", using transaction records from the Department of Lands and Surveys. In the fourth quarter of 2025 it stood at 152.9 (2015 = 100), 6.0% higher than a year earlier. Prices have been above the previous year's level in every quarter since the start of 2022.

Permits give a rough measure of the other side: the value of works that applicants declare, divided by floor area. Between 2015 and 2025 the average price index rose by 51% and the declared cost of a square metre of housing by 19%. The declared cost leaves out land, and it is what applicants write on the form rather than an audited figure, so the gap shows a direction, not a precise margin.

CYSTAT's house price report of December 2025 adds median sale prices per square metre by district. In 2024 they ranged from 1,757 euro in Famagusta to 2,975 euro in Limassol. The declared cost of building a square metre of housing that year was 1,175 euro.

Bigger flats, dearer square metres

The declared cost of a square metre of housing rose from 655 euro in 2003 to about 1,160 euro now, in nominal terms. The average flat in 2025 permits had 143 m² of building per unit, against 118 m² in 2003. That area includes stairwells, corridors and other shared space, so the flats themselves are smaller. Single houses averaged 244 m².

Where the rest of the money goes

Permits issued in 2025 declared 4.0 billion euro of works, the highest full year in the series, and 3.2 billion of it was housing. The earlier high, 3.7 billion in 2019, came mostly from hotels and tourism, which declared 634 million euro that year against 111 million in 2025. Offices declared 181 million in 2025, more than three times the 2007 figure.

Explore the table

All 26 rows of the CYSTAT permits table, month by month. Pick a building type and a measure.

How to read these numbers

A permit is permission to build, not a building. Some permitted projects start years later and some never do. The value is what the applicant declares when applying, not a sale price and not the final cost, and all money figures are in euro of their own year.

CYSTAT stopped publishing "cottage apartment complexes" as a separate line in 2021. For 2003–2006, "division of plots" includes road construction. The price index has a break in the first quarter of 2015, when CYSTAT redefined the model variables.