Buying a flat in Krakow; prices are still falling?

Could you quote from the article, as I would have to register to view it.

SeanBM-Here is part of the article, I should not put the entire article on because of copyright laws. Just do a google search on - Foreigners abandon Polish property market.

When Padraic Coll began looking for investors interested in putting money into Poland a decade ago, he had a ready audience among Irish farmers who had seen their own property values balloon and wanted to get in on the ground floor of another economic success story.

Thanks Warszawski, good article.

I agree with it, I know a few people who took equity from their homes, re-mortgaged or just got a mortgage and bought here in Poland because they saw what happened in Ireland and saw the same happening in Poland.

But the market here was/is not a foreign market but local, so the impact has not been that great.

I like the claim that Warsaw prices peaked at ten grand a metre. I know my flat is still worth that much!

Anyone who got in here in 2002-2003 will be laughing today - but the people who were gambling on off-plan developments in 2007 quite rightfully got their fingers burnt.

Prices seem to be pretty stable now though. And still beyond Biernat's wallet!

If you already got to pay for it, why would you want to buy a flat one? lol (kidding)

[quote=delphiandomine]Prices seem to be pretty stable now though.[/quotThere is no such thing as a stable bubble, but there is a thing called denial.

There's no such thing as a bubble where prices go down by 10% over a three year period; however, there is a thing called cretins who should go out and get a job instead of crying over the fact that they can't afford a shoebox-sized apartment on the pittance that their wife brings home.

No - but there is such thing as a normal market correction, which is a common and necessary process of market stabilisation. Prices probably were a bit inflated in 2007 (as much as 10-15%) but those are not bubble figures.

You fail to take into account the fact that demand is running a long way ahead of supply. When the supply/demand dynamic changes we can start talking about bubbles for real. Young Polish families - not just foreign property speculators - want to move out of blocks; older families with children want to leave cities for the comparative repose of the suburbs or green belts surrounding them.

This is not a tulips or South Sea situation.

Which is unfortunate really: milky could just about afford a tulip.

a bit!!!

Numbers, boy, numbers. Try and express yourself with at least a minimal level of precision. By a factor of what, would you estimate? I say (the market says) 10-15% - therefore I call no bubble.

Now show me yours. If the actual prices are anything less than 50% over fair value - and prove it - again, no bubble on any normally-accepted understanding of the term.

Yes M, a "bit". The size of the 'bit' varies from 20% (for large luxury apartments in Warsaw) to 5% for small flats in central Warsaw to nothing at all for medium-size apartments in provincial cities. We're all still waiting for the 50% drop that you keep saying is coming. Could you perhaps give us some detail as to when exactly that fall will be? It's just that I want to buy a bigger flat and am wondering if I should buy now or be like you and wait.

Smart move, there is plenty of wiggle room out there, no matter what size flat/apartment you are looking at. The properties that are going to sell now, will be the ones that have a low interest guaranteed mortgage package in place. Finding a property is not a problem, it is getting the financing.

Especially when one is self-employed.

Fortunately my current place is now 100% equity, so I can put the mortgage down on both of them and throw in another 10% as cash.

You staying in the same area ?

Most certainly: love my neighbourhood!

With the exception of " Royal india " here is a link about Indian food in Wars: So many Indians these days!!!

Good. If the prices are really going down, that means that ordinary Cracovians will have the chance to stay in their own city.

Exactly

Prices have gone down. Unfortunately the biggest drops have no been in the kind of flats that ordinary people would be able to afford anyway. Demand for the small cheapish units is still strong and that has kept price drops for those at about 5% or less. The other thing keeping the prices of those units high is that they never really appealed to the speculators and so their prices weren't driven up to the same extent.

And the reason?
That is all, Polish workers can afford. The waves of western money have dried up, as the redundant Poles, return home, to their (Polish)minimum wage of 2 euros an hour.

All they can afford now, on their 'Polish wages', are these over priced tiny cages in miserable blocks!!! As the two and three bedroom apartments remain vacant.

Do you happen to have any sources to back your claim that Poles have returned home in large numbers? Polish experts disagree with you


news

By the way, you might like to learn the difference between the meaning of the word "minimum" and the meaning of the word "average".


If that type of flat is overpriced, how come the values have been holding through the worst global recession and correction in Polish property prices for the past couple of decades?

But you have to hand it to those Poles in their "minimum wage" jobs, at least they manage to buy flats: they aren't left renting places and hating it, like that a certain loser in Krakow is. Perhaps it's because both of the people in those couples work, instead of one of them going out to work while the other one tries to make his long-dreamt-of internet fortune! Perhaps you should get a job, M.

No they are not returning in large numbers, for sure!, but are remaining in the UK and Eire even if unemployed, because social welfare payment in Ireland is twice that of the average industrial wage in Poland and almost four times higher than that of someone on minimum wage in Poland. Therefore, the money they are accumulating in the west 'now', is a lot less than previous, so the bag of gold is much smaller and this explains why the market is stagnant since 2007.


Simple answer, the prices are based on Poles in the West. The actual Polish economy has, and had nothing, to do with the Polish property bubble. Just like the Irish property bubble was driven by American multinationals, the Polish bubble was driven by Poles working abroad in the former booming economies.

The market has been stagnant since 2007? You really are at odds with everybody else when it comes to property prices! Everybody else says that the market has fallen a bit but you seem to think that it has been stagnant!


Wrong again Mark. The only people who buy small flats in the city centre are people who want to live there. Poles abroad buy either new-build stuff (which is very pricy in city centres and so tends not to appeal to them) or houses.

So a newly married Polish couple would prefer to live in one bedroom apartment.lol
Its because thats all they can afford and you know it Mr Ulterior Motives.


not me

They won't be buying in the city centre: flats in the city centre are far more expensive than in the suburbs. Strange that you don't know such a basic fact about property prices.


Yes Mark, of course Mark.

PS Congratulations on learning how to spell ulterior. Now if you can just master basic economics....

I didn't say anything about the 'city centre',Harry.???? "Little cages in miserable Blocks",can be anywhere??? It must be past your bedtime, sleep well tonight, Harry, in your 'lonesome' single bed.

Mr Ulterior Motives.

Neither lonesome nor single thanks Mark. But what are you doing up so late? Oh yes, you don't have to get up tomorrow to go to work.

Wrong as usual, its the 2 bedroom flats that are the most sought after, but thats just my opinion, I only build and sell them so I could be telling lies.