Methodology

Why the median, not the average

Every price on this site is a median: the middle value, with half the transactions below it and half above. Averages are useless on a property market because a handful of transactions move them: one penthouse in a municipality that sees fifty sales a year lifts the average by several per cent and moves the median by nothing. Property prices are right-skewed — the upper tail is long, the lower one cannot go below zero — and for that shape the median is the measure that describes a typical transaction.

The median is computed on the price per square metre rather than the total, because homes vary more by size than by quality. A price per square metre is attributed to a transaction only when the attribution is unambiguous: one whole building part, or one whole parcel. A contract that transfers an apartment, a garage and a storage room for a single sum counts as a recorded sale but never enters the €/m² calculation.

The open-market filter

Only transactions the register flags as open-market enter the statistics. Excluded are:

• sales between family members and between related parties,
• sales at public auction in enforcement, bankruptcy or compulsory settlement,
• expropriations and sales in lieu of expropriation,
• finance leases and the creation or transfer of a building right,
• for leases: letting between related parties, and non-profit or restitution tenancies.

Their prices do not reflect market conditions and would drag the median down. The total count of recorded sales on each page still includes all of them — which is why “recorded sales” and “open-market transactions” are two different numbers on the same page, deliberately.

When a figure is printed at all

A small sample gives you a precise-looking number that means nothing. Hence the thresholds:

• 5 priced transactions in a group before a median appears in the breakdown table;
• 10 before a median takes a headline card or the page title;
• 15 in a year before that year plots a point on a trend line — the gap stays a gap, because empty space is more honest than a straight line through a number we do not have;
• 20 on each side (sales and leases) before a gross yield is computed;
• 200 in total and 30 in the last two years before a settlement or cadastral district gets a page of its own.

Where a threshold is not met, a dash stands there. We never print an estimate in place of a measurement.

Data vintage and period

The headline figures cover the last two years, counted back from the date of the most recent transaction in the register — not from today, which would quietly empty the window whenever a release runs late. The date of the last transaction and the date of the last rebuild are both in the footer of every page.

Trend charts run back to 2007 for sales and 2013 for leases, the years each register opened. Values are nominal, with no inflation adjustment, so they compare directly with the prices in today's listings and contracts.

The authority publishes a new annual file and tops up the current year during the year. The last two years are therefore usually slightly under-filled: a transaction reaches the register weeks to months after it is signed.

Why leases are counted by signing year

The lease register is an annual snapshot of running contracts: the same contract reappears every year it remains in force. A time series built on the reporting year therefore measures how long tenancies last, not what rent costs. Every rent series here stands on the year the contract was signed — the same event the sales series measures. Contracts signed before 2013 appear only if they were still running then, so they are not a sample of their own year and are cut off.

Gross rental yield

The formula is simple, and gross on purpose:

yield = (median rent €/m² per month × 12) / median price €/m² × 100

Both medians come from the same period and the same area, both for apartments. The figure deducts no rental income tax, maintenance or management cost, reserve fund, insurance, agency fee, or months when the flat stands empty. A net yield is in practice a third to a half lower. Use it to compare places, not to forecast the return on a particular investment.

Place names

The register writes the same place shouted in one file and cased in another, and abbreviates some municipalities (“SV. TROJICA V SLOV. GORICAH”). Both spellings are folded onto one page. The Slovenian grammatical forms of municipality names are written by hand; for settlements and cadastral districts the locative is derived by rule, and where the ending is ambiguous the page uses the neutral “v naselju X” form rather than guessing.

Corrections

If a figure looks wrong, we will fix it — write to info@dragaslovenija.si with the page address. An error in the source register is corrected by the Surveying and Mapping Authority; an error in our calculation or wording is corrected here, usually within days, and the page gets a new last-updated date.

The data is published under CC BY 4.0. Cite it as: Vir: Draga Slovenija (dragaslovenija.si), podatki GURS ETN.