OTP Bank: Hungarian residential property market is at a turning point

The growth of the domestic housing sector was still sustained in the first half of the year, but there are clear signs of the turn of the cycle, OTP Ingatlanpont real estate brokerage said on Thursday to MTI.

Citing the data of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, they said that between July and September, 4.5 thousand new homes were handed over, which is the best third-quarter result in the last 12 years, while in the first nine months of the year, 13,617 homes were handed over, 7.7 percent more than in the base period.

The year-on-year increase between January and September was 36 percent in municipalities, 22 percent in county towns and 7.7 percent in smaller towns, while in the capital the number of housing transfers shrank by 10 percent.

The divergence is partly explained by the Covid effect in smaller municipalities, with many people moving out of the big cities, while large investments in the capital may have been hit particularly hard by the recent difficulties, construction price rises, supply chains and labour shortages, the statement quotes Dávid Valkó, senior analyst at OTP Ingatlanpont. Another reason, the expert said, is that the metropolitan housing market, which usually reacts more quickly to changes in the housing market, is also experiencing an earlier slowdown.