First Apartment Trivia

napi.hu 14.12.16 – Demand and opportunity tend to arise ever later for young people to have their own first apartment and household. According to data collected by the Hungarian Statistical Office during the past 10 years young Hungarians leave the family home at the average age of 27.5.

During this ten-year period a total of 280,000 young people moved to their first new home, 75 per cent of them started their new life as proud owners. Ten years ago the average purchase price of the first home was HUF 9 million (approx. EUR 28 650 at current exchange rate) and it bought a studio or a one bedroom apartment.

This has also changed during the past decade although HUF 9 million does not seem a lot if we include the properties purchased in small settlements and small towns. An apartment bought for HUF 9 million ten years ago can be worth twice as much today. Only a few fortunate can buy their second apartment without having to sell the first one. The majority adds HUF 3 to 4 million to the selling price and buys an apartment with one or two bedrooms more.

Decreasing apartment prices on the horizon?

napi.hu, 29.11.2016 – There are signs of slowing of the property market, not only in downtown Budapest but in the outlying districts such as South-Pest, too. Prices are stagnating but experts believe they may even start to decrease in the near future. Real estate agents agree that the selling price hike has stopped and is hovering at previous, high levels, but any further growth of supply may result in lower prices. One source of such growth could be the consequence of the exchange rate limit that may increase the monthly instalments of loans denominated in a foreign currency and this, in turn, can force owners to offer their properties for sale. This could bring about a price drop of 5-10 per cent. However, the bargaining margin has not increased yet. Owners of condominium apartments seem very tough negotiators and are not prepared to give discounts exceeding 5 per cent. For detached or semi-detached houses buyers can achieve a little more: 5-12 per cent.

Demand for housing was weak for most of 2023, but by the end of the year interest had increased, and from the beginning of 2024 the Csok Plus programme boosted the market

hvg.hu 16.04 In the first quarter of this year, home buyers took advantage of the new subsidy option in almost exactly one sixth of the loans, 16.7 percent. Of course, it was not only the Csok Plus programme that helped, but also the fact that interest rates have started to fall and inflation has also […]

Second highest house price increase in the EU since 2010 in Hungary

hvg.hu, 04 04 – In the last quarter of 2023, the average price of housing in the EU was 48 percent more expensive than in 2010 – Eurostat said. House prices in Hungary rose by 185 percent between 2010 and 2023. This is the second highest increase in the EU, with only Estonia 217 percent […]

Heirs left in the lurch at the probate hearing

napi.hu, 20.01 – Cryptocurrencies, social media profiles or documents stored in the cloud are increasingly common in probate proceedings. However, few people know that in lack of proper regulation and provisions, access to crypto currencies can be questionable for heirs, or that tech giants only allow access to deceased people’s data to those entitled to […]

Property and mortgage market data

napi.hu, 18.01 – More than a third of Budapest clients signed contracts for over HUF 20 million last year. Between September and December, for example, their share was 42%, which reflects an increase of 10 percentage points in 2021. The number of applications in this value range has increased steadily from quarter to quarter, to […]

Real estate prices have increased on the back of CSOK

napi.hu, 5 October – A study shows that the family home allowance (CSOK) has not improved the birth rate, but its amount has been incorporated into the price of homes. Three quarters of the subsidy was bunt up by the price rise, and the number of people having three children has not increased even in […]