Sounds great: Rent prices are lower in Budapest and the whole country

The Central Statistical Office’s report reveals that even though prices have started picking up after the sharp fallback this spring, rent is still cheaper compared to last year’s figures in all parts of Hungary.

The results were published in this article by Portfolio, and were based on the latest report by the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH). The published results refer to the first eight months of 2020.

Perhaps not so surprisingly, the majority of advertised apartments were found in Budapest (60.8%). Of all the flat listings, only 6.1% were for family houses, the vast majority of apartments being in multi-apartment buildings.

Portfolio highlights that apartments for rent also differ in size (floor area) between Budapest and the rest of the country.

While in Budapest, the average floor area was 53 square metres, this number was 57 square metres in the county seats, and 67 square metres in smaller settlements.

The report also reveals that on average, 46.9% of postings came from individuals, although in Budapest, postings by agents have a somewhat larger share (55.5%).

Rent: cheaper but highly volatile

When it comes to renting prices, the national average shows that there was a sharp decline around March and April, and even though prices have started picking up again, this year’s results are still below 2019’s data.

To get the average values, KSH used the last available price for apartments before they were removed from the advertisement platform ingatlan.com in the given month.

Compared to last year’s figures for the same month, the average decrease is 6.4% – this is how much apartments for rent were cheaper in August throughout the country.

This indicates a slight increase since the fallback around March and April and is 134% of the value in the base period (2015). Volatility, on the other hand, has been significantly higher in 2020 than at any time since 2015.

If we take a look at Budapest, we will see that some districts had significantly more volatile prices than others. These include the Buda hills and the central districts of Pest, but following a drop this spring to summer-2018 price levels, rent in these areas has started to increase again.

In the periphery, rent prices have shown a decreasing trend in general. As a result, prices in the whole of Budapest were about 10% lower in August 2020 than one year ago.

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Source: portfolio.hu