Poland's apartment prices continue to fall

Exactly an average rent between 1600 zl and 2000 zl a month buys you a four nights in London and in Paris but certainly not at a four stars hotel ,sorry!

Really a four stars hotel in London for 50£ per night you say? Please do share your tips and adresses about those 4 stars hotels in London , we would love to go to...

Check Hotwire, they almost always have four-star hotels in London for under £50 per night.

If the prices of houses here drop (predicted) then i suggest a proposal, If the governments of this world climbed a ladder and found that the socials had hiked the economy then I could buy a mansion here in england. Problem there is that If I were rich and had one the price would fall. If I had a brown paper bag and a newspaper to keep me warm then i would still be happy with what i had before, a house :)

English saying: rocketing prices means a hiked budget and that means to much fuel in the governemnts think tanks, then nothing works.

I'm proud to be British, never in the world would i buy a home in poland, i feel the approach they lead gave me a negative affect, I losy my religeon felt raped of my soul and lost almost everything. Who's to blame for the price of a home. the socials that lived there in a shelter that hiked the prices in the first place, then loast everything. if the economy meant that the poles who lived outside of Poland had a choice to go back and buy a home with theri savings, then how come i can't save enough to eat most days?

If religeon had anything to do with the economy then i would never be chatholic ... I have lived in a house in England with them and tried to chnaged my mind in my beliefs and then run home and share their wealth. I have read around this forum and looked at the BIG REVIEWS, Proud to be Polish, Once again I feel my soul has been raped. Why do polish people choose english names anyway?

Banned? we'll see :)

Come home to Poland, son; England is obviously not for you.

so it's already actually a bubble

That's no surprise - Krakow is a very attractive place to live, while Berlin has 20% unemployment and a creaking transport system.

Compare Krakow to another thriving provincial city (let's say Graz) - and you can see the true state of affairs.

I agree 100% but as i said one can live in Krakow and rent a place instead of buying it because it is much cheaper than in a lot of places in Europe but buying in Krakow ,Warsaw is more expensive.

In my opinion, it is not worth buying a flat or a house if it means paying more for property than in Berlin, Montpellier ,Sevilla etc

you can pay rent your entire life and never have anything to show for it except making your landlord richer
you have to weigh up whether you want to own your own place when you retire
as you will have trouble paying for the rent once you stop working

The situation with the house prices in Poland generally is that the sellers believe that their house is worth a certain
inflated price and will not budge. It will have to take something drastic like major developers going bust
to kick start price reductions. The developers will get desparate and flood the market with low price new builds.
the build quality will go to hell as they will order inferior windows etc, cut down on cement in the mortar etc in
order to save money

you have to remember that unlike the UK and the States if you cannot pay your mortgage you cannot
walk away and post the keys back to the bank. The bank gets a low price at an auction but at least
they got something and asks the government to bail them out

In Poland a debt collection company will chase you for the
rest of your natural life whilst your house gets sold at the best price on the open market.
This props the house prices up

You cannot walk away in the UK. The debt will follow you and if it is a joint mortgage, it will follow the other person as well.

If the bank repossess and fails to recover the debt at auction, the balance plus accruing interest, plus costs, will still be sought by the lender.


The following is a comment written in reply to an artical in an English Newspaper today:- The Telegraph. Thursday 08 September 2011

"These plans are completely devoid of reality. If you think you'll get lots of affordable nice housing out of it you're living in a dream world. There won't be any development until massive profits can be made. Until then it's cheaper to have all their labourers/builders/joiners etc. who are often subbies, unemployed. These are businesses - they're not going to build if no-one can afford to buy the things in the end."

The writer understands as well as I do, the "reality" of housing development. Three years since the financial crises began in 2008. How many of the developers in Poland have gone bankrupt? I have read of one Swedish development company which is going to finish off its projects in Poland and concentrate on the Scandinavian market as its not profitable for them here in the present market. The main players are all concentrating on smaller projects/apartments with prices that are acceptable by the banks for mortgage loans. This is what I posted, would happen, two years ago.

That's why when prices are so inflated as in cities like Krakow or Warsaw and you risk beeing burdened all your life by heavy mortgages ,the best might be to rent while you are working and buy a nice and cheap place in a smaller town or in the country side to retire .

You can find nice houses for less than 300 000 pln in Poland but not in Krakow or Warsaw...

unlike what they did in the rest of the world. One fifth of property in Ireland is empty due to its bubble. The developers are not rational, as they are driven by profit and an acute blind faith in the free-market.

surely you just declare yourself bankrupt?

we will see if developers start to go bankrupt.

developers did not go belly up in 2008 as Poland was not really suffering during
the recession. in fact Poland more or less escaped untouched. Let's see if the Swiss Franc mortgage repayments have any influence
as that was a factor that was not problematic back in 2008

friends of mine in the industry are planning that developers are going to fold and that the market is
going to take a down turn. who knows if they are right or not.

one thing for sure is that you cannot possibly compare Ireland with its shameless overspending and ridiculously lapse lending
restrictions to Poland.

I agree. The only problem I can see with this, is that the cost of rents will rise along with the cost of living. Will people be able to afford ever increasing rents, save enough to buy a house outright and have a good enough pension to retire on?

exactly and the answer is probably not.
people are living too long and the birthrate is too low to expect state pensions to provide anything more than utter poverty and if you go for a private pension, you are equally screwed when the stock market takes a dive just as you retire, like now for example

that is the reason why property is so popular
many people do not have a clue how the stock market functions however it is easy for most people to
understand that some people will not be able or willing to get a mortgage and they will be forced to rent

Don't forget, there's always the option to buy a plot of land and do it yourself over several years. Much easier - OK, less hard - than in many other countries.

Why ? rents will move according to supply and demand. The rent I get for one of my flats which is good and well located has been stuck at 1300 for 4 years but wages have increased 30% in that time. I have not been able to fill it at a higher price - the times when I offered it for higher it just sat around unoccupied for a couple of months until readvertized and I would rather have reliable tenants paying 1300 than take a risk on someone new.

There are plenty of examples of rents falling in all sectors - housing, retail, office space, warehousing - I would say they are all going down at present or static at best.

So you would still be paying rent and using any savings you might be able to scrimp together to build the house over a period of years. This would of course gain you a small saving but you would be paying 23% VAT on any labour/materials you had to purchase, whereas, to buy new, would only involve VAT of 8%. I think this might be practical if you were living with family and paying only a token rent but if you were renting at the open market rates, it would not be worth it. Also, the strain of spending all your "free" time on a project such as building an entire house can be quite daunting but at least its built to your own specification.

In Poland you pay full VAT but you can claim 16% back.
It's a struggle but it's possible if, as you say, you have anything left after paying rent.


You got that right, but it's worth it in the end. We've just finished finishing our place (if you know what I mean) and we've spent about 210,000PLN to build a 105m house, not including the cost of land.

Congratulations. It is hugely satisfying to stand back at the end and look at what you have achieved. I wish you every happiness in your new home.

Thanks. And good luck to those who decide to do the same as we did. We haven't had a holiday in six years and we buy second-hand clothes, but I'm the King around here, and my Queen tells me I can say that!

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Wow congratulations Teflcat, your house looks really pretty and it sure does compensate for your 6 years of effort without holiday.
is the inside done too?
It seems that most houses in Poland do not have a piwnica ,no foundations inside the ground ,am i right?

Thanks for your comments. Well, as far as I know, most houses do have a basement. Where else would they keep all the pickles? We have eight layers of foundation brick below the house. In fact most of the money we spent was on stuff we'll never see! We chose not to have one on grounds of cost and the fact that there's an old house on our plot that we use for storage. Yes, the inside is all done. Home sweet home.

Perfect, this way your house will go to your future generations without any problem.
I have a friend who also built a house( with a building company) but just on the grounds, no foundations below her house, she paid about 220 000 zl in 2007 for about 150M2 without the land.

For me i prefer houses with foundations and a big basement/cellar/piwnica, it seems stronger ( not that there are any hurricane yet in the Krakow region ...) but it just looks stronger and more practical as space is paramount.

I rember when they were 2000zl metre and exchange was 0ver 6 to the pound and near krakow centrum was around 5000.spitalani ul two bedroomed new flat $145000.i wanted to move here but like a prat i left it to long,a big crash would be good whole worlds gone mad

Just a side line in relation to the future property market, there is a US chap by the name of Harry Dent....may be familiar to folks in the US...claims property market in Europe will well and truly crash in mid 2012...not trying to scare and do not agree just worth a read..

finance.yahoo/blogs/daily-ticker/harry-dent-major-crash-coming-stocks-commodities-already-20110331-080715-415.html

Only when the average house is affordable to the average wage earner in any given area will the housing market recover. Unless the housing market crashes back to this figure rapidly, all that will happen is a stagnated market will wait for earnings and the effects of inflation to bring about the balance.

From the comments made by people who have watched the video clip, he is not regarded as much of an expert and the last time I looked the DJI was in America.


Same old, same old. Every couple of weeks you revive this thread and state the same thing. Why is it that you never mention the new housing projects that are being started?

Why don't you mention the projects that have been abandoned? ( perhaps there are none) Why don't you tell us about all the developers that have gone bankrupt? Anything, anything at all that is worthy of discussion, not this same old mantra of what you wish/need to happen for you to obtain your own home.

same old, same old system, i reckon...what happens there happens here. Free-market eh...
duped people in 2006 laughed at people who said the property in Ireland was a bubble and now...............

It seems you're praying that the prices don't take a dive and render your investment a loss.

That would be very hard to do as its sold and I have already paid the tax. The next investment is only now being planned. Sorry to p*ss all over your party.