Where do the wealthy class live in Warsaw?

In Prague and other cities where there are hills most wealthy people live on the hills. So I wonder Prague being flat as a pancake, where do the wealthy live there? Where's Doda's house for example?

In West End.

what do you classify as wealthy?

There isn't really a 'wealthy' district in Warsaw. There is a social mix in virtually every part of the city. Most of the more affluent people live on the west side of the river but the Saska Kępa district on the east bank has a few embassies and some lovely pre-war villas. It used to be an artist's colony before the war. Picasso visited there during his brief trip to Poland. On the west bank the 'best' districts are Żoliborz (Kaczynski lives there), Mokotów and maybe Ochota - but even these are very much a mixed bag with big swathes of social housing, horrendous noisy traffic etc.

On the outskirts of Warsaw, Podkowa Leśna (not part of Warsaw) is officially a 'rich' neighbourhood with not one tower block but has its hidden poor living in old crumbling villas taken over by the state during communist times.

Why? do you want to rob them?

he is bulgarian afterall. natural born thieves.

Are you also happy when it is said about Poles in the West? Why are you so stupid, tell us.

no i am just sick of him constantly shi*ting on poland in favour of czech when he is too dumb young and full of *** to reside in both countries. I get it . I love czechia too but it really is too much when he does not have the brains or brawn to succeed in both countries and spits on poland.

Konstancin-Jeziorna,a town in piseczno county is also a very affluent town with huge beautiful houses,there also some middle class building but I have seen huge beautiul houses and high density of the Warsaw financial elites own properties there.


You still didnt tell what do you mean by wealthy?

That is a very interesting question Cargo.
Perhaps a native Pole could answer that for us.

cargo is native pole as far as i am concerned. he knows more about the mafia and government and how poland works than most natives.

But there are a lot of 'new rich' and a certain vulgarity that you won't see in Podkowa Leśna. Konstancin-Jeziorna is not historically a single unit with a history; it's a mish-mash of bits combined into a 'new town' whereas Podkowa Leśna was designed as a garden city, like Hamsptead Garden Suburb in London (where I lived for a time) which predates it by about twenty years and was also a kind of social experiment. Like HGS, the original design of PL was for all gardens to be open and free from fencing or walls, which many of the residents still prefer.

If we're talking about the very very wealthy, they often live in the the city center and Nowy Świat in very large high rise buildings. Imagine an apartment which takes up the same space as 15-20 regular apartments which takes up an entire floor of the building and the ceilings are as tall as 3 to 4 regular apartments stacked together.

As another poster mentioned Konstantin is also very popular for the pre-war type villas. In general where any large amounts of land can be purchased many wealthy people will build homes inside forests to keep far away from the plebs. In general most moderately wealthy people do not want to live in the city anymore.

As for the upper class but not quite mega wealthy they tend to live in Wilanow and Saska Kempa. As mentioned already there are some places scattered in Mokotow, Ochota, and Wola but its far and few in between.

amd if we talk about the mega wealthy then lets talk about what was allowed on TVP in the 90s youtube.com/watch?v=lpBlLsTWgMg

I agree however it was Cargo's question that still has not been answer in monetary terms.
Like 1 million, 5 million, 10 million plus ?

Stare Młociny (some very expensive real estate including protected 1930s mansions), Magdalenka, Truskaw, parts of Wawer. Nearer the centre, there are parts of Zoliborz and Saske Kępa, the older parts of Mokotów and of course Stara Ochota.

BTW, some of those areas are somewhat hilly. Warsaw isn't entirely flat.


The pop singer? As far as I remember, their main residence is elsewhere.

It does depend on your definition of wealthy. To live in Old Ochota or Old Mokotow you'll definitely need to earn above the average income but it's still doable for a decent chunk of people. Which cannot be said for places like the majority of Wilanow or Konstantin. Old Ochota is fairly expensive compared to most of Warsaw due to the location but the apartments themselves are not usually very "wealthy" tier, as they are often small and built in the old french style with courtyards and gates. The Filtry "district" in Ochota has old townhomes but being a 1-2 minute walk from the heart of Centrum, the same as most of Old Ochota, these old town houses can be worth millions of dollars despite being quite modest. The same with Old Mokotow, most of the district is fairly modest and doesn't seem to be very expensive due to the modernity or class of buildings but due to the location.

Nice ones too, though rarely on sale. There are some very similar houses in Stary Bielany.

Yes,I would say 90% of then are "new rich"or"Accidentally rich" as Poland prospers.When I went first time to Poland in 2000 I drove by Konstanchin and saw huge fenced/walled luxury houses and there were fields all around them with those rotting wooden shabby shacks.Now the same land owners want multi millions for there plots only.

Those houses would put Whoopy Goldbergs,Bon Jovi,and Bruce springsteens houses in NJ look like shacks.

"New rich" and "Accidently rich" aka the majority of those that should have been punished under lustration :)

@jon357
Indeed but being close enough to throw a paper airplane into the central station I can see why they aren't for sale

I meant was that suddenly when Poland joined the EU,there were/are so many opportunities,that success was easy and so is now as compared to the developed countries where people from all over the world come and compete to be successful,and in Poland it was only among Poles,who knew each others mentality and there way of thinking.I know at least 5 Poles in Warsaw and Gdansk personally who are making over 150k euros a month(YES,over 1.8 Mil Euros a year) when before 2004 they were not even making 2000Pln a month.Imagine how many people in the country are making like that.One of the guys I will not name has 2 floors in the Deloitte building on Alej Jana Pawla II,who gifts luxury cars to his employees. as yearly bonus.

Look how the Warsaw skyline(I see you are from WAWA) has changed esp in night with them bright lights compared to what it looked like till 2006/7,all grey and yellow dim lights.I would see people pissing where Zlota trasy Mall is now next to Zlota 44 luxury high-rise,Twarda 2(I am not sure of name and adress)and this is happening in all the country.In early 2000s Babka towers was the most luxury building(across Arcadia) with a price tag of 6500pln a Msq.HA HA I still remember if I wanted to buy a property and ask a Polish friend to call and some sellers would say its not for Polish people but only for foreigners(they meant Polish people have no money to buy that property).I will call that "Accidently Rich",thx to the Poland joining the EU.

PS:Just out of curiosity are you Jewish,as I know 2 orthodox Jews with that name.

Btw how can you get rich in Poland? Marry into wealth? Drugs? Offering girls?

@JakeRyan Btw how can you get rich in Poland?

You can be from a family that has connections to the communist era who purchased off businesses and industries in various sectors of the economy for 5% or less of its value or you can have foreign investment thats pretty much the only way, which usually comes from family connections.. Having a good idea and starting a decent business would be like 1% of rich people in Poland.

@Cargo_pants

I know what you meant but the fact is that for the 2 decades after the collapse of PRL the majority of those who had these "opportunities" were those who were well connected, whether from families who were always well known in Poland for many years or from Communist times. From the 90s to the end of the 00's the criminal elements were huge with those who have decent wealth and have prosperous businesses. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of honest hard working buisness people who are moderately wealthy. But the average VERY wealthy person is not an honest person. Poland never had true economic Lustration to keep people from the communist times out of the economy as well , while there was Lustration for the public sector. Its the same problem as Russia but much more exacerbated there.

Is nissan not a Japanese car company? I'm a blonde hair blue eyed Pole, so I don't think I'm jewish.

Just for you - I did some research. According to 2019 data, there were approximately 31,000 people living in Poland that earned more than 1 million that year. This was defined by the person's tax filings, and the amounts concerned are in zloty. TBH, it seems wrong to me that there are only 31,000 people in Poland earning more than $250k a year, since the evidence on the streets seems to indicate otherwise, as well as my own anecdotal experience - but numbers are numbers. For total net worth, we have international consultancy Capgemini to thank, and it reports that there are more than 150,000 dollar millionaires living in the country.

At the top end, looking at Poland's annual list of 100 richest people - it looks like you needed to be worth at least $90M to be featured in that list in 2019, which is $9M more than the year before.

For context, the number of dollar millionaires in Spain (rough population equivalent) is 1.2 million people, is 250k in Russia, and 22 million in the USA. The entry price for the annual Forbes 100 list is $150 million in Spain, $1B in Russia, and $6.5B in the USA.

Overall, I think one has to say Poland is doing just about how it should be doing given its market and population size, and the all-important fact that it has been integrated into the world economy for just thirty years.

There's a lot of Poles with 1-5 mln EU/USD in assets - small business owners, white collar professionals, and a lot of families where the breadwinner lives in UK/USA/Germany/etc and sends money back and eventually retires. I can easily believe that there's over 150,000 people with 1 mln US/EU in assets technically making them a millionaire and if anything that number is probably a low estimate (some stats considering a millionaire to be someone with 1 mln in assets total, others 1 mln in assets aside from their main abode.. if it's the latter I'd think the 150k estimate is accurate, if the former undercounted).

But there doesn't appear to be a lot of multimillionaires with 5-10+ mln EU/USD in net worth like you see in the US, UK, etc. where entire neighborhoods and small towns are filled with such people. There's perhaps 2-3 neighborhoods in Wroclaw where you have homes going for 1-2 million zloty

The definition capgemini used is, as you said, inclusive of primary residence and not just liquid assets. I did not find any information for the $5-10MM+ cohort you mentioned, but I did find something for UNHNWis (Ultra High Net Worth Individual) in Poland from Credit Suisse for 2020. UNHNWis are defined as $30MM+. It appears that there are only about a thousand of them in Poland, whereas their number in the States is 100k. Basically there's a hundred times more of them. Hence, the absence of millionaire towns in Poland. I think this is just a function of time. Wealth is built over generations. World wars, revolutions, transitions between different economic systems has prevented Poles from accumulating.

I figured... if that's the case I'd say the 150k estimate is probably even an undercount. That'd be .3% of Poles. I'd say that at least 1-3% of Poles living in urban/suburban areas around Warsaw, Wroclaw, Krakow, and the other larger cities have over 1 mln in assets.

If you even look at property listings there's tons of homes and even condos priced over 500k eu/usd and also jobs especially in IT and management that pay well over 15-20k+ with some even paying 30-40k for senior level.


That's precisely why most of the millionaires in Poland are nouveau riche/new money.

Not entirely on-topic, but this generational wealth accumulation idea is precisely the reason why the West should stop freaking out about China. Going by GDP numbers alone, it may seem to an observer that China is close to overtaking or has already overtaken the United States (if one goes by purchasing power rather than nominal dollar to dollar comparisons). But GDP is only a measure of output, not wealth. Aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines are paid for not with GDP but wealth. In this regard America is at least twice the size of China, and the lead is actually INCREASING. American national wealth in 2019 was approximately $118 trillion, whereas China's was $64 trillion. This lead was at least $12 trillion larger than in 2011.

China is still a very poor country, and will remain so for a long time. Building steel plants and aluminum smelters may look good in aggregate GDP numbers, but if they are not useful and productive they do not add to wealth.

You get rich in Poland by excelling in education/sport/commerce, hard work, financial prudence, and favorable external conditions (i.e. luck) just like anywhere else in the world. These kind of questions really p!ss me off to no end. Just like Johnny Reb's troll question about what defines wealth for PF posters. It pissed me off so much I wanted to show him, using statistics, that there is a whole small-city's-worth of individuals in Poland that are far richer than his redneck standard of jet skis surrounded by "hardbodies".

People that think that successful Eastern Europeans, and poles specifically, all made their wealth through sex trafficking, money laundering, online fraud etc can all go and collectively f#ck themselves. Been dealing with this attitude from the western world's collective dregs (losers who don't get a "hello's"- worth of recognition at home in the west), who decided to descend on the East as some Wild West frontier beginning from the 1990s, and I find this tone worst than racist.

I do find that wealthy Poles tend to make their fortunes more through entrepreneurship, real estate, savings, etc. rather than through more risky speculative investments - forex, stocks, etc. Poles are much more risk averse than westerners that's for sure. And even the poorest manage to live within their means and even squirrel away a few zloty here and there for a rainy day.