Poland's apartment prices continue to fall

he is a commercial agent. different game.

Oh, of course.

In other words, you are losing your bet in every city in Poland. Remember this little classic of yours?

Harry whether it's 12% or 20% it's a fair whack compared to the UK were even in the worse areas its only about 3-4% per year overall. Infact it may not be this bad as European invest in UK property due to the weakness and uncertainty of the Euro.

The problem as well with Poland is that there is an ever decreasing population and 10's or thousands of new housing and apartment developments springing up daily it will only get worse. House prices are all about supply and demand.. an in Poland there are too many empty houses for the market not to burst big style. The UK doesn't have enough housing for it's population so prices are more stable. I can take a walk in Gdynia today and take hundreds of photo's of estate agents adverts showing old prices crossed out and never prices written on them. Add to this the problem alot of Poles have with regards to Swiss franc mortgages!

The only issue is that you're forgetting that there's still a shortage of housing stock compared to the population.

If anything, those problems are keeping prices up by lowering the supply. I know people who simply cannot sell until prices go higher than the peak levels, because they took out 100% (even 110%) mortgages and now with the price falls and the currency loss, they are utterly stuck. Those properties will not be going on the market any time soon.

What kind of status-obsessed lunatic would take a 110% mortgage? :/

Out of curiosity Harry, did you have much trouble getting a mortgage back in the day?

Nothing compared to the UK. I can't see how there can be a shortage the amount of new apartments springing up and the amount of emmigration. Come to Gdynia and see how empty Sea Towers is! Maybe there is a massive shortage of affordable housing and there in lies Polands problem. The houses are too expensive of the people that need to buy them. Thousands of 300,000zl properties lying empty as families live 3 generations under 1 roof.


Harry, there is a supply of properties but not enough people able to pay for them. Poles will soon start whining for larger salaries to buy houses, unemployment will go up..end of the Polish dream.

People who I now cannot remind them of what I told them about the wisdom of getting a 110% mortgage, especially in a foreign currency.


Yes, lots.

Yes, I know people in a similar situation;they really are up sh1t creak without a paddle, because it's not going to happen in the next decade,if ever.


welcome to Poland, things will change in that front soon as gravity always wins.

No chance of that. They would have to raise the minimum wage to something above poverty levels for the Polish housing market to get moving. And to do that would be economic suicide in Poland. Poland really has a massive problem.

Met a chap last week who is under pressure due to a CHF mortgage - he is off to the UK to try to get his income higher and leaving his low paid Polish job (shop worker). (He speaks really good English btw, I can't speak Polish!)

The problem is that the new apartments are not necessarily desirable. For instance, I know of new apartments lying empty simply because they were built very much on the cheap - no-one is interested in them for exactly that reason. Nothing to do with supply and demand and everything to do with people not wanting to splash out on crap.


Too expensive? There's plenty of affordable accommodation in Poland. The real issue is that there is a strange cultural habit of not "upgrading" - so people will often stay in unsuitable conditions for much longer because they want the ideal property - rather than getting one property and selling it within a few years for something better.

Or, of course, there are family problems. It's not uncommon that the grandparents are alcoholics/ill, so the children have to stay there simply because the parents would have nowhere to go if they left. There is also that little law that requires children to take care of their parents...


No, they're up **** creek because they overreached themselves. Same story in most European countries - fortunately, Poland has far less of them compared to the UK, Ireland, Spain, etc.


The Polish housing market seems to be doing just fine. Care to provide any evidence to the contrary?

Really? keep telling yourself that nobody is buying them cos they are crap... FGS polish people are used to living in Blocks, delapidated properties and concrete boxes. A shiny new apartment (even badly designed) has to be an improvement for millions of them?


Do I really need to show you the drop in prices in Poland over the last year? Take a walk outside and see the for sale signs and empty apartments


affordable to who? the people working in the local government offices?, the girls in beidronka?, the hotel and restaurant workers, shop workers, people working in factories making cheap plastic goods or polish doors and windows?... who are these people with the money? you sound like Peterweg!

What fantasy land do you live in? try 125,000 per year.


You might like to read the report I posted before:-
The physical problems with the buildings today are numberless: poor insulation on windows and in the buildings in general, the outside scraping off, poor plumbing and heating, disputes over ownership (and responsibility) of the common areas, small size of rooms and distance from amenities. The other imposing physical problem is that they are still occupied by residents as before the changes. Poland and the entire former Warsaw Pact world facesinterminable housing shortages, especially in the major cities. Ironically, Warsaw itself actually has more blocks of flats being built on the horizon, this time by capitalist developers, than it has destruction of old ones.


Not surprising since Poles do not have access to SF mortgages.

ha, sometimes Delph is just hysterical. that dude will come up with the most outlandish ways of explaining things, it's uncanny. you hit the nail right on the head, gdyniaguy. who wouldn't take a shiny new apartment over the crap hole they most likely grew up in.......that is probably falling apart.


gydyniaguy, it's because you don't know any wealthy people and live in a cardboard box, that's why you don't know about things like this ;) do you drive a car in poland? if not, that would make you even less knowledgable on the matter......

Referring to my post above

blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2011/06/17/polish-mortgages-a-pain-frankly
(from June 2011)


I think the Swiss then pegged the CHF to help matters, not sure.

I do know wealthy people and very important wealthy people. I also know how poor the vast majority of Poles are and for anybody to spout off that Poles arnt buying because of rubbish apartments being built is just rubbish.

Hardly an improvement if your 25 year investment looks barely fit to last. I've seen examples of nice new apartments falling to bits with large cracks in the wall/etc after 18 months - do you think any Pole in their right mind is going to buy such a thing?


The drop in prices can actually be attributed to the toughening of the mortgage criteria and the drying up of CHF loans. Nothing to do with the market as such, but rather a change in mortgage conditions.


I think it's pretty obvious that you don't have a grip on how Poland actually works. Let's see -

Local government offices? It's as secure a job as it gets. A couple working for the local government would easily have an income of around 4000zl after tax - which is more than enough to get a mortgage on a 2-3 bedroom property in the vast majority of places. No problem there.

Biedronka? They're pretty much the lowest of the low. What gives them the right to own property, given that they didn't educate themselves, didn't do anything for it and don't do anything particularly difficult?

Hotel and restaurant workers? Again, in what country do such menial workers expect to buy property?

What country in Europe actually lets such people buy property?

In Poland, just like everywhere else - it's the middle classes that buy property. The working classes in the UK only managed because of the right-to-buy - if ti wasn't for that, most of them would still be renting from the State.


Indeed. Poland is riddled with people who live in large flats by virtue of being well connected during Communism. Look in Wroclaw - the centre is hurting terribly because of such people.

We don't even talk about how flats lie empty because they inherited Babcia's flat and they think it's worth much more than it is. I lost track of how many flats I looked at that were exactly like that - Babcia had died, the flat needed total renovation and they still wanted 25-30% more than the rest.

But - to all the usual suspects - why do you think that the Biedronka worker has a right to buy a flat?

Probably a person who realises that the shiny new apartment was built on the quick with every possible corner cut and therefore is worth nowhere near the amount the developer wants for it. When the market was booming, developers could get away with that kind of thing (just about). Now the market is stagnant, they simply cannot.

The SF is pegged to the Euro at 1.20. This was not to help matters but to protect Swiss tourism and exports. Anyone care to guess what will happen if the Euro disappears?

In the UK in oder to get a mortgage on a new build the house need to have some sort of long term guarentee, If this isnt the case in Poland then maybe the government should up the anti and get it in place.

I'm working class and from England and I can tell you that alot of the working class don't live in coucil housing so we couldn't get cheap houses from the government. My first mortgage was horrendous and we struggled to get a deposit together so we could reduce our loan to 90%. Buy-to-let isn't worth it in the long run and creates more problems then it solves. Poland's problem is the lack of affordable housing enabling the lowest paid to get on the housing ladder which in turn creates movement in the housing market. 4000zl where i am in Poland wouldn't get you much of a three bedroomed house, maybe a small 1 or 2 bedroomed apartment at most. Besides that how many single Poles and couples don't earn anywhere near that?

P.s. Biedronka? They're pretty much the lowest of the low. What gives them the right to own property, given that they didn't educate themselves - bit of a sh!ts way of thinking...who serves you at the supermarket...they do a job that needs to be done and deserve the respect that you would expect. People like them need to become upwardly mobile on the housing market. People like them will buy the flat from the people that will then buy your house and allow you to move up the ladder. Without them you are all fkd!

The Polish government was advised to build more affordable housing but instead has sold out to cheap fly-by-night developers (some from abroad) who are causing problems in the housing market by building cheaply in order to turn a fast buck before the bubble bursts...the same happened in spain and ireland. Added to this the fact that the old style blocks are starting to be well past their sell-buy-dates and need to be replaced they have dug themselves into a massive hole.

I'm also pretty certain that the banks are taking a much tougher line on newbuilds too.

But really, what's happening in Poland happens everywhere. The working classes rent or share, the middle classes buy. What's new?

(interestingly, home ownership isn't popular at all in Germany or Switzerland, so it's hardly a reliable measure of wealth)

Your right. The Germans rent and save and because they arn't tied down in one place then they subsequently have a more mobile workforce. But this has taken generations to instill into the psyche of the populations. Whereas on the other hand in the UK the Thatcherites told us all to buy and in Poland the government opened a bit can of worms buy giving away the old housing stock cheaply and creating a house owing society.

The employees at one of the Biedronkas I go to (great value 500g cottage cheese at 3.95zl btw) seem pretty well-educated to me. Several on the tills speak English, at least one seems fluent. Local Americans who work at a large firm also shop at that branch, they're management, not sure they or me are aware nor would agree we're being served by "pretty much the lowest of the low". LOL


Now stop shattering my faith in human nature, they and their govt were doing it because they are a kind, and unselfish nation, surely?

Look at the video then tell me these people are not just irresistibly warm and cuddly?

youtube.com/watch?v=n0r2GWi56E4

Ah, I don't mean it in an offensive way, just that they're at the lowest point on the work ladder and salary ladder.

Then again, gdyniaguy seems to criticise Thatcher for selling off the housing stock, yet seems to think that everyone has a right to buy. Conflicted economics, anyone?

I know what you meant - but yes it came out a bit Pete Tong, gave me a good giggle though, it really did.

I just don't know how long I could live in a tiny apartment with my parents, sister, my wife and an infant child for example, with money to put down on a home, and simply continue to live like that all because "I'm just not happy with the material they used to build those walls in that bloc of flats." How many young adults know a damn thing about construction anyhow.

it comes down to dollars and cents, not construction quality. the market is not stagnant because 20 somethings starting families are far too saavy to buy poorly constructed apartments.

That's right. They were also kind enough to look after the money of dictators, drug lords and Nazis with no questions asked.

The point is that they are buying elsewhere and not in the shoddily built stuff that was being thrown up just as the market peaked and now sits largely empty.