High rent, low number of rooms: nowhere to stay for Hungarian students

24.hu reported about a comparison regarding rent and student jobs. According to this, while a student in Vienna has to work 97 hours a month to pay for a single-room flatlet with furniture, a student from Budapest would have to work in a fast food restaurant for 179 hours monthly to have the same flat. To make matters worse, Pénzcentrum.hu tells us that there are not enough dorm places either.

European comparison

The comparison made by the CIG Pannónia Insurance Company took into account the rent prices in European capitals, and the wage for the most typical student job: working in a fast food restaurant. Thus they could compare how much a student in each city has to work on average to pay rent. They compared the rent for 25 m² single-room flats, on the 1^st-4^th floors with furniture.

The most expensive flatlets are in Vienna, they cost 282,000 Forints for a month in general.

The Austrian capital is followed by Prague (236,000 Ft), Budapest (170,000 Ft), Warsaw (157,500 Ft), Bratislava (153,000 Ft) and Bucharest (113,000 Ft). Of course, these are average numbers, and in each city, there are great differences, for example in Budapest the prices can be anywhere between 80,000 and 320,000 Forints.

In the capitals with the biggest dispersion in prices the number of tourists and long-term foreign renters is always high.

The other factor of the research was the local wage in fast food restaurants which is different in the countries just like rent, so it forms a good basis for comparison.

The results show that although the rent is usually the highest in Vienna, the wages are also higher, so it is here that students have to work the least for their housing: 97 hours a month.

On the other hand, it is in Budapest that students have to work the most, with 179 hours.

The Hungarian capital is followed by Warsaw and Prague, with 175 and 163 hours, respectively. So all in all, a student in Budapest has to work among the French fries twice the time his or her Austrian counterpart has to.

What about the dorms?

You might ask why the students rent then, why do not they just stay in dorms?

Well, at the moment the Hungarian public higher education has room in dormitories for 44,444 students, but there are more than four times more students at the universities.