Poland's apartment prices continue to fall

And how do you know that the price reflects the market price? By definition market price is set by every transaction including that one which you are a part of. Actually by bargaining you are setting market price at the moment... Big and small companies are doing it by daily basis. Regular folks too when deal is big enough. It is called capitalism ;) Actually lack of proper bargaining is one of the cause of every bubble, ie. latest bubble in US where floor was artificially set by improper appraisals.

Interesting but i am not sure i agree with you, the bubble in the US was created by greed ( investors and speculators buying tons of properties and selling them the next day before they were even built) with the complicity or the help of Big US financial Institutions.

How do we know that a price reflects the market price? Well ,sellers , landlords , property buyers and tenants just look at the other offers on a specific market, don't they?

Different mentality, most Poles that are selling especially the old, don't have a mortgage, so telling someone that they are only worth half as much as their neighbor, who sold two weeks ago is a difficult one to digest, on the part of the seller. Do not underestimate Polish sellers they are very canny operators, they will try to wear you down for the extra few thousand Zlots, in Poland it is a game of chess and they got all the time in the world. If they sense you want it, there is no room for discount, you can only find a way to solve their problem.


The same thing happened in Ireland, Portugal, Poland, Spain and UK . What is your point here "LK"

Well, financial blogs like calculatedrisk claimed that one of the very important propeller in the entire process was inflated appraisals. In order to gave inflated mortgage banks needed inflated apraisals to claim they have proper collateral for a mortgage. Because thanks to securitiazation process banks bore no risk and had unlimited amount of cash their goal was to inflate a price. Appraisers were in general dependent on banks and entire process corrupted leading to a bubble. And there was no point to bargain becasue "house prices never fall". Of course there were more propellers, and overall mechanics of this process is quite interesting, but that is probably OT here. It was greed of course, but greed is a constant property of reality. The interesting thing is what was the canals that greed used to get out of the bottle.


Of course, and those offers are the effect of the average prices from transactions in time X in a given area. And it happens that in Poland we do negotiate the price. The only period we didn't were years of property boom in 2005-2008... Offer price is not a market price, especially currently. Look for reports from REAS and other for example. Transaction prices are lower than offer prices at least a few percent, in certain caseses even more. To not bargain/negotiate the price especially when the market is falling is to act unwisely...

To make an example: there is a property in Wroclaw, a flat. In the last tender about half year ago city offered it for about 0,5 mln PLN. Nobody was interested. Now the offer price is under 0,4 mln PLN. (to all who claims that sky is falling, I would add that this flat needs a lot of work).

Sure but this is not bargaining! You said it yourself , the offer price did not meet any potential buyers so the city decided to lower the price because the city needed money, no one came saying i want to buy it at this much and the city did not lower the price until they wanted to .

Now was the city silly not to offer an affordable price in the first place? Certainly.

For me there is a nuance between bargaining and negotiation ,bargaining means to want everything for nothing and negotiation involves that the 2 parties come to a suitable agreement for both parties.

If bargaining is a rule in Poland and you are right then it is mainly in Real Estate because how come Internet and Phone services are the most expensive in Europe? How come Poles don't bargain and break those monopolies and high prices?

Very good point LK.

As a native Pole, I didn't know such nuance exists that bargain is somewhat deregatory term. I meant bargain in terms of hard but still price negociation.


Exactly. Like I said Poles do openly negotiate when the deal is huge enough for them.. Bread, internet and phone are not in such category yet.

Excellent point.

Well I have seen it happening for a decade in Poland...before the "collapse". And knowing the culture I can totally see them being too proud to lower prices and insisting they "deserve" a higher price. Maybe you can find examples of the same elsewhere but it doesn't change the insanity of it. In most places when things don't sell prices get lowered so they will....not raised.

If something isn't selling then the price isn't "correct". Supply and demand dictates price not what a landlord thinks they deserve. I have seen flats sit empty for a couple of years. If they wish to lose even more money owning an empty flat that is costing them then that is their choice. But it's pretty stupid.

There very good points, normally the family home is handed down to other family members, and there is no pressure to sell if you don't need to, I think the future will change the mentality of buying and selling.

The Poles are also very aware of prices abroad ! So they might also resent it when a foreigner who they believe comes frrom a rich country(UK, US etc) and is trying to lower their prices when they know for certain that a Shoreditch pad may cost up to 1000£ per week (4900 zl !).

They want foreigners to pay more than the Poles and not less!

If you are not Polish (and not going through a Polish spouse or a Polish friend) and the price is not written down in the first place you can be sure you ll be quoted 3 times the Polish prices for absolutely everything(services,flats ,etc) you wish to purchase or rent!

Just like in Marrakesh !

Right or wrong?

Perhaps not 3 times but it will double, I've noticed that Real Estate Agencies don't give the asking price but just say the property is negotiable. I hazard a guess that the agent checks out the nature of the buyer and sets the price accordingly

Well it's the cultural way so who can say. But it turns off potential buyers and renters. There are plenty of flats I would have rented when I was looking if they had reasonable prices. And that's reasonable for the area not for what they perceive my nationality should pay. I don't make a lot of money and if they imagine I should pay more they will get nothing from me instead.

I don't play games in life...I will tell you what I will pay and if you won't take it then I walk away....someone will take it.

No comment on my house for 1500 PLN / m2?

If there are no hidden defaults your 1500zl/M2 house looks like a real Bargain Wroclaw Boy.
Why is it so cheap ? It does not look too remote from a big city.

Are you sure it is not in a floodable area?

found in 20 seconds, find me 10 more so??


To hell with the Germans, if they didn't loan our cowboys the money(with their phony stress tests) in the first place, we would not be in such trouble. The dole needs to be cut but only after the country defaults and tell the Germans and all the rest of the Black and Tans to f0ck off......Then the dole can be cut and wages can be lowered, any other suggestion is just prolonging the inevitable....(and satisfying the reactionary)

Polish apartment prices continue to fall(is the topic btw)

There are loads about. My house cost about that and it has 2.8 ha of land.

Maybe a large shell of a house(sh1thole) in a place with zero chance of employment, but not something of medium size in a reasonable condition.

Ireland wages are four time higher at least and.......

It was perfectly habitable and 30 minutes drive from Krakow.

In a word, no. Poland is actually a pretty bad place to invest in property, and it has been since about 2006. Investors flocked to Poland in 2004 after the country joined the European Union, and it didn't take long for prices to get out of hand. The earliest investors, those who bought in 2004 and 2005, could have achieved a fantastic return on their investment if they had sold in late 2007 or early 2008, and would probably still see a tidy profit if selling now, but there is no longer any easy money to be had for new investors in a country which quickly developed a property bubble and saw it burst quicker than it came.

Did I see the word bubble there??
ryankett.hubpages.com/hub/Is-Poland-A-Good-Place-To-Invest-In-Property-For-2012

Property Prices In Poland

2005: +28%
2006: +33%
2007: +28%
2008: +5%
2009: 0%
2010: -3%
2011: -5%
2012: -4% to -10% (predicted)
2013: ??
2014: ??

I was here in 2002, a mortgage was the same price as rent.
And people were telling me back then that prices were too high.

Most people in Poland live in the countryside, just look at the demographics of the country, 38 million people and relativly few in the cities.
As this country has been turning from an agricultural (rural) to a customer based and industrial erconomy people will move to the cities but that doesn't mean they have to live in zone one.

This also effects the price per metre square and so long as there is work and there is work, the prices are not going to plumet like some have warned.

I personally think that the world economic crises happened at a good time for Poland. If the economy had have persisted, Poland would have become the next Ireland.

It was just before it got rediculious that this price correction happened, you can't call it a crash even by looking at your own predictions just there milky.

Is Poland a good property investment? Not unless you live here and that depends on where you live.

You manage to shoot yourself in the foot every time. Your posts from 2009 predicted a fall of 50-60%, the figures you now produce show an average fall of only 8%. Since we have had a world financial crises, most people would call this a "correction", not a bubble or crash. If the Euro implodes, we may see another correction but nothing that will offset the price rises between 2004-2008. I cannot wait for your next excuse.

Remember how last September he was saying prices would go down by at least 20% in the next 12 months? And now that has been pegged back to 4% - 10%. Bit pathetic really.

The only thing predictable is the rubbish that milky posts.

The article above is complete ' diatribe' here is a quote " The property market in Poland was pretty much non-existent before 2004, there were plenty of homes and not really any such thing as an estate agent outside of the major cities (the buyer and seller would sit down at a table and negotiate with no third parties). There are now thousands of real estate agents who set up shop to take advantage of overseas buyers, usually charging fees to both buyers and sellers

Poland had already been through two peak and downturns by 2004. The author of this article clearly has absolutely no knowledge of Polish real estate, nor has he taken the time to research it. The boom period from 2004 was fueled by the availability of easy mortgages, prior to that most people took loans and payed them off as quickly as possible.

" The author of this article clearly has absolutely no knowledge of Polish real estate,"
Sounds like certain people here, wouldn't you say?

Don't shoot the messenger
However, the article in my opinion is flawed in many ways. Fails to mention mortgages in Swiss Francs and the phony governments grants etc.

Didn't qualify for Rodzina na Swoim, did we?

Always an excuse. Why did you not point out the articals flaws when you posted it?

Did they teach you compound interest at school? Probably not, 99% of the populations seems to be unable got grasp the effect of interest and therefore inflation.

The fall in absolute numbers has been 11.5-17.5% so far. With inflation the fall has been to 24.7% to 29%. It would take another three to four years of 4% and 5% inflation to reach a 50% fall.

Can the economic crash last another four years? almost certainly..