The properties Hungarians are looking for: the market is in turmoil
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Rising energy costs are increasingly pushing buyers to downsize and seek cheaper and, therefore, smaller properties. The main beneficiaries of this trend are certainly the one-bedroom apartment owners. But what is the reality? What kind of new trends do real estate agents forecast?
“It is difficult to keep track of the growing demand for flats at the moment. In December, the Budapest real estate market saw a significant drop in sales, which means that there were few transactions. This makes comparisons difficult,” said Andrea Nagy, professional manager of two offices at Balla Real Estate, to penzcentrum.hu.
She emphasised that due to the low level of interest, they could only conclude that apartments with favourable prices were easily sold. These include one-bedroom apartments or even detached houses. Even in this challenging market, the estate agent was able to sell a high-scale property just after one day of negotiation.
Despite the volatile market situation, we still see advertising prices rise continuously, while this is no longer the case for selling prices. Even for well-endowed properties, sales prices are at best stagnating, while for less well-endowed properties, sales prices are visibly falling.
However, one-bedroom apartments can be either in good or poor condition. The mere fact that a property is a one-bedroom apartment does not determine the level of potential interest in it.
Read alsoHungarian households enjoy the cheapest energy in Europe?
Andrea Nagy continues to observe steady interest in these properties, especially among young people, young professionals or students moving from the countryside – and their parents. There is no sign that buyers consider a one-bedroom apartment less liveable than a larger one.
Gabi Marosvölgyi, the professional manager of one of Balla Real Estate’s offices, confirmed the same. She also noticed that there was significant interest in smaller apartments in Csepel. However, there is a massive gap between the price imagined or afforded by buyers and the actual advertised price.
In other parts of South Pest, however, the situation is a little different. Mária Rencsevics is the professional manager of Balla Real Estate’s three other offices. She said, the most sought-after properties typically share the following features: these mostly former municipal apartments open to a courtyard and are usually situated on the ground floor.
The entire property / real estate & construction industry – they all (3) three are in total disarray in Hungary.
Factually this has been building for the past 48 months pre the Noval Virus Pandemic at its height & effects on Hungary and the Russian War on the Ukraine.
It SIMPLE comes back to in a MAJOR point of explanation – that the SECTORS – all (3) three of them – where going to be OVER sized in numbers, that when the DOWNTURN of the Hungarian economy went into rapid decline DOWNWARDS – when this happened as it HAS in Hungary massively in February 2022 – these (3) three aligned INDUSTRIES – sellers wanting OUT – the in-balance of greater numbers of sellers to buyers – it was as has happened going to be a blood bath and carnage factually occurring within these (3) three industries that continues to WORSEN.
The worse is yet to be realized witnessed in Hungary.
Sellers’s outweighing Buyers – in a collapsing economy – SCARY.