First principles calculations including relativistic effects are carried out for dipole moments, polarizabilities, first- and second-order hyperpolarizabilities for the series of furan homologues XC4H 4, X = O, S, Se, Te, at three different levels of theory, time-dependent Dirac-Hartree-Fock (DHF), time-dependent Hartree-Fock with a Douglas-Kroll transformed one-component Hamiltonian, and time-dependent Hartree-Fock using effective-core potentials. By comparison with the corresponding non-relativistic results, the influence of relativistic effects on the properties as well as the accuracy of previously reported calculations on these molecules using effective-core potentials for selenium and tellurium can be addressed. The obtained results indicate that relativistic effects can be described with comparable accuracy at all three employed levels, and that non-scalar effects, which are explicitly treated only at the time-dependent DHF level, are of minor importance. Frequency dispersion and relativity are found to be additive at the single-determinant level. We find that relativistic effects cannot make up for the earlier identified mismatch between theory and experiment for the non-linear polarizabilities of the heavier homologues. A Bishop-Kirtman analysis of vibrational effects indicates that the same can be said about these. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.