Apartment prices are falling, yet one in Prague was sold for 85 million, according to the survey
Data on apartment offers for sale according to Valuo.cz show that offer prices in 15 large cities were 4.7 percent lower in October than in the second quarter of the year. Century 21, based on its data, says that since the beginning of this year, there has been a reduction of about five percent in the offer prices, but adds that in real terms, the prices of properties sold have fallen by up to 30 percent.
“It is quite a logically expected development. After an increase in interest rates, the number of mortgages provided will decrease, thereby reducing purchasing power. Sellers who do not respond to this situation and do not reduce prices will not sell, and their properties will hang on real estate servers for many months,” said Radek Šitera, founder of the Valuo.cz website.
Century 21 broker Lukáš Peterek said that after the crisis in 2008, it took eight years for prices to reach their original level and start to rise again. “We cannot predict the length of the price drop, but we can say with almost certainty that it will not be just like that, and certainly not in the next year,” said Peterek.
He stated that the 3+1 panel apartment in Brno – Staré Lískovec intended for complete reconstruction at the end of last year cost around six million crowns and now it was sold for five million, i.e. 16.7 percent cheaper.
The Valuo.cz portal stated in its analysis that 22 percent of apartment offers advertised in October 2022 were discounted. A year earlier it was 12 percent. According to the data, the average discount is 269,269 crowns.
Year-on-year, according to Valuo.cz, the number of sales in the whole country fell by 26 percent, in Liberec even by 64 percent. As the number of completed sales decreases, offers accumulate on real estate servers. As of October 2021, the number of apartments offered in the Czech Republic increased by 99 percent. In Jihlava, the year-on-year difference is even 243 percent, according to the survey.
So the seller has to rethink the strategy to find serious interest. Miroslav Střihavka from Century 21 stated that if a broker wants to sell today, he must anticipate price developments and know the situation. “The present is testing the quality of brokers. Posting an ad is not enough. A broker must work on marketing and invest in it.
Presentation, virtual tours, professional photos and videos or work with social networks are important. Such marketing is quite expensive and the broker should carefully consider what he wants to sell in the first place. Either he has a chance to sell or so-called throw the money down the drain,” said Střihavka.
According to the survey, this year the most expensive apartment was sold in Prague in Josefov for 85 million crowns. In Karlovy Vary near the colonnade, the price of an apartment rose to 22.6 million crowns, and the third place is an apartment in Brno, where it was sold for 18.2 million crowns.