More and more elderly people are buying a new apartment in Prague. Mainly due to poorer availability of mortgages
Prague has the youngest population among the Czech regions, according to the second census last year the population of the capital has an average age of 41.4 years. “More young people live in Prague than in most other Czech regions. As a result of inflation, the unavailability of apartments and their rising prices, you will be able to purchase apartments less and less,” said the executive director of Central Group, Michaela Tomášková.
In the first half of this year, the company registered only around 13 percent of buyers under 30, up from between 15 and 20 percent previously. On the contrary, the number of people over 60 has increased to 15 percent, previously it was only around ten percent. People aged 41 to 50 years (31.6 percent this year) and 31 to 40 years old (25.6 percent this year) buy the most new apartments in history.
“We consider the main reasons for the increase in the average age of our clients to be that people put savings into real estate in an attempt to protect money from inflation. And, of course, older people tend to have savings. More expensive and less affordable mortgages also hit younger people more,” said Tomášková.
According to her, the decrease in younger buyers corresponds to the way of financing a new apartment. In the past, you bought an apartment she took out a mortgage for roughly half of them, but now mortgage interest rates are at most three times more expensive than a year ago. For people under the age of 36, milder CNB limits apply, but according to Tomášková, the higher interest rates are too high for them, and they are combined with a general increase in prices.
“Unblocking barriers to new residential construction is key to solving unaffordable housing. The priority is fundamentally to speed up permitting, to ensure valid rules for construction development, enough areas for construction and more money for the city part and the municipalities where construction is being built,” said Tomášková.
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