Prague 9 offers the most apartments for sale. However, new buildings are growing all over the city
The largest number of flats for sale are currently located in Prague 9, Prague 5 and Prague 3. According to the mentioned analysis, the ninth district also leads the list in terms of the number of flats sold last year. Almost 700 units found their buyer there, which represents 22.4 percent of the total number of apartments sold during 2022. Only slightly less, 648 apartments, went to Prague 5.
However, Prague 9 surpassed the other districts in the number of apartments that were put up for sale at the end of the year. “In the last quarter of 2022, the supply of new housing increased the most in Prague 9, followed by Prague 7 and Prague 3. On the contrary, Prague 8 and Prague 2 recorded the largest decrease in apartments for sale year-on-year,” says Petr Michálek, chairman of the board of Skanska Residential.
A widespread reduction in apartment prices is not expected. Some older apartments could be significantly cheaper
According to the offer of the Flatzone.cz portal Flatzone.cz of new housing in Prague 9, which is at the forefront also thanks to brownfields, from which entire residential or multifunctional districts are often created in several stages, in the second half of January this year there were nine hundred units out of more than two dozen projects. For all of them, let’s mention, for example, the Kolbenova Park project near the Vysočanská metro station, then the Emil Kolben Quarter, the Suomi Hloubětín complex or the Tesla Hloubětín Residential District.
According to Flatzone.cz, at the beginning of the year, the Prague 5 district offers approximately six hundred apartments in approximately thirty projects to those interested in buying an apartment. Arcus City, mentioned above, Nová Waltrovka, Rezidence Radlické vilídty, Smíchov City and Lihovar Smíchov na Zlíchov are among those that have unmistakably changed or are changing the face of the locality in which it was created.
Projects that have a significant impact on the transformation of Prague 3 include the Park district in Žižkov, the Byty Na Vac project and partially Hagibor, located at the junction of Žižkov, Vinohrad and Strašnice.
Is the time ripe for mild optimism?
As it emerged from the Home Portal poll, conducted at the beginning of the year among developers of residential projects up to fifty units, the market is starting to show a slightly moderate optimism. Approximately half of the respondents (47%) expect an improvement already in the second half of the year, approximately the same amount (45%) in 2024, and only a small part of the respondents (approx. 8%) believe that the improvement will occur later.
“If we compare the situation in January with the last two months of last year, we see an increase in demand by hundreds of percent. there are still plenty of buyers with money here, so the question remains how long they will be willing to play the waiting game with the seller for a possible discount. This is because the current expectations of buyers and sellers diverge widely. Of course, the market does not bear any absence of mortgages, but the drop from the fourth quarter of 2022 does not correspond to the drop in purchasing power,” believes Jan Vitvera, sales director of Home Portal.
I believe the interest in luxury apartments is a crisis. Most buyers do not need a mortgage
When asked what would most help stimulate the residential market, 77 percent of surveyed developers cited lower mortgage rates, 13 percent faster building permits, and 20 percent mentioned a faster pace of construction. This is especially small in Prague compared to other European capitals, and thus creates a situation in which, according to experts, lowering the prices of new apartments is not on the agenda.
What and for how much?
The average size of apartments in the developers’ current offer is 63 m2.
half of the offer, 42%, consists of 2+kk apartments. 1+kk and 3+kk apartments are far behind (24% each), 4+kk apartments (9%) and 5+kk apartments share the last 10%.
At the end of 2022, people paid an average of 9.7 million crowns for a new apartment in Prague.
More than 2/3 of sales last year consisted of 2+kk and 1+kk apartments.