Prague owns 1300 empty apartments. They are mostly demolished, millions are missing for repairs
Prague manages almost 1,300 unoccupied city apartments. This follows from the analysis of the Prague City Councilor Adam Zábranský (pirates), which is available at the E15 daily. Empty flats are often in poor or desolate condition. The municipality now promises to pay up to half a billion crowns for their repair.
The city districts of Prague have a total of about 23.5 thousand flats, of which 1,291 are empty, ie more than five percent. “Reconstructions are financially demanding. It is possible that the city district did not have the money or did not want to invest in it, because the return on investment can be several years,” said Zábranský according to E15.
The municipality is going to announce this year and the town hall’s request will be able to request money for the reconstruction. The institute intends to cover the subsidy program from the city’s affordable housing fund. The total costs could climb to half a billion crowns, Zábranský estimates. The fund now has 1.4 billion crowns.
According to Kateřina Písačková, the central city district has already selected 20 flats for reconstruction, for a total amount of 26 million crowns. However, Prague 10 does not plan to wait for municipal money and intends to renovate empty flats this year.
New flats have risen in price by a fifth
At the same time, the prices of new flats in Prague are rising and their number still does not satisfy demand, the latest numbers of development companies show.
The average price of new flats sold in Prague at the end of March rose by 18.2 percent to 104,666 per square meter The number of vacant flats offered by developers in the first quarter of this year remained at 5,400 as at the end of last year.
“In the coming months, the average price will probably rise slightly, but not so dramatically. Lower prices would of course be helped by an increased supply of new apartments,” said Trigema Chairman Marcel Soural.
The break in price development with new apartments occurred in mid-2015. Until then, their prices in the capital increased by two percent in two years. However, they are currently 88 percent higher than in June 2015.
Due to high real estate prices, interest in rental housing is also growing in Prague. Demand for it has risen by tens of percent, real estate companies said in March. In Prague, the average price for renting a 2 + 1 apartment in a block of flats is now 15,000 crowns without fees, and a brick apartment of the same size costs 18,000 to 19,000 crowns. At the end of 2018, the average rent in Prague was CZK 340 per square meter.