Are the property prices in Poland too high?

PiS must make salaries higher. I saw the Price to income ratio in most Polish cities is around 15, even for Rzeszow. For Skelleftea Sweden it's 5.99, Sofia 9.67. The lower the better (means that a salary can buy you more sq m2).

In other words properties in Rzeszow are more expensive than in Sofia yet salaries are lower while properties in Skelleftea are accessible as the salaries there are quite high. How can Poles even buy an apartment with such salaries?

They have no incentive, they've staked out the welfare demographic and more people with higher salaries will simply deplete their voter base (and risk their standing with the crabs-in-a-bucket core electorate).

Huh so when the young abd bright ones migrate to work abroad who's going to be left to pay for said benefits? (lots of Poles heading to Scandinavia lately btw)

Partly I don't think they're thinking that far ahead.... partly they'd just blame problems in the country on the 'worse sort' of Poles who left which would shore up their voter support. They'd rather be in charge of a poor Poland than out of power in a much richer country (the party prezes has said as much in interviews).

What's up with the Bulgarian protests? What's the end game?

They are falling fast right now.


I'm sure they're not. They've been lucky so far however don't seem to have much long-term economic strategy.

@jon357
Are they really falling? I think they should fall as well overpriced now, but a fall isn't what i observe in Krakow.

Vendors are still 'optimistic' about the asking price, however here in Warsaw fewer people are buying and rental flats are empty.

Prices are dropping very quickly in retail and office space too - plenty of good cheap rents going and lots of vacancy.

Warehouse space is still quite expensive though

I still see they asking same or more price but again I look at prominent corner places with alcohol and gastronomy permits.Poles never sell at a cheaper price until they are choking financially to sell.
Go figure cold storage warehouses,they have seriously gone up and have a huge shortage lol I use to hate short term leases and now norms are changing and long term umowa dont make sense in this case.

Rental rates (commercial and residential) don't necessarily follow the laws of supply and demand very well... 45 years of enforced housing scarcity are still being felt.

I'm talking more about organized retail and office space. Corner shops I have no idea but if you were to open one now you should be very careful about paying a high rent - there is huge overcapacity i and Zabka, Rabat and their imitators are not in a good position to withstand a downturn.

I've heard very weird stories about retail rent over the years... every bit as dysfunctional as the housing market (one reason maybe that otherwise inconvenient centrum handlowe became a thing...).

Has been the crappiest tenant that has a whole department to squeeze landlords.So many for sale all over Poland currently.Here: ... .BTW those kind of non franchised stores if run right can net you over 3/400 k PLN net a year,and the inside info is that Rossman is downsizing big time so is Hebe.


What stories???Rent goes by location and needed size for the business.

Sorry wrong link:okolica.pl/oferty-inwestycyjne/?filter%5Bcena_od%5D=&filter%5Bcena_do%5D=&filter%5Bstopa_zwrotu_od%5D=&filter%5Bstopa_zwrotu_do%5D=&filter%5Bwojewodztwo%5D=&filter%5Bsort%5D=

Two worst I've heard...

The older story was that the owner of the location figured out on his own how much income the store would usually bring in a month.... and raised the rent to that amount. He apparently expected the business owner to have some kind of side hustle to make a profit.... (this was an old PRL attitude where those who rented usually had to pay their entire salary to the landlord and engage in side hustles to live on).

Another was a location owner of an empty space who expected a new renter to pay rent for the months the location had stood empty between tenants (another case the owner wanted any new renter to pay for the unpaid damages of the previous tenant...).

But this type of attitude is not only linked to old PRL times, it is also cultural.Unlike the Brits or the Dutch who are first and foremost traders, the inner psyche of a Pole is that of a peasant/landowner, who has no clue about offer and demand and what a market really is/how it functions. Hence many real estate owners in PL prefer to sit on unlet houses/flats until they meet a prospective tenant ready to pay their price (someone will turn up one day !) rather than adapt (ie lower) their price to where the demand is.

Some years ago I was involved in editing a paper in ethnography that (among other things) made the case that unlike some European countries where the process of peasantry becoming urbanized was gradual and natural, in Poland it was more that the cities became.... peasantized?

That is the patterns of peasants moving to the city (before the PRL) was faster and larger with fewer intermediate steps and they held onto traditional attitudes longer and more thoroughly.

that paper actually clarified a lot of things I'd noticed but had never understood previously.

The first instance is insane,unheard of but can happen in Poland.No tenant will rent until he still makes money there so whats the problem?can happen still though.

In second instance,it can happen as it depends on the location.I know first hand who sold a gas station with 10 year lease and the guy in 7th year gave it to his son and formed a new company and the landlord asked for 250k again.Station was closed for 2/3 months and tenant had to pay 250k and and the rent for 3 months for the closed time and that was in USA.In other words landlord of a prominent property can charge for the lease lol and its becoming very prevalent in Poland now also.

Also in some countries in Asia,Mcdonalds sometimes dont pay any rent to the mall owners and the owners charge rent to its neighbours.Similarly like products pay supermarkets for space to set up there displays.

That's understandable, since McD attracts traffic to the mall which benefits all other retailers present

Polish countryside had been largely overpopulated before the war. After it, communists decided to solve the problem by erecting new housing estates in cities and making peasants live there and work in newly built heavy industry plants.

My wife told me a story from early 1970s - one of her neighbours kept pigs in the cellar, until other tenants got annoyed with the stink and snitched on him, coz it was illegal.