AMRON-SARFiN Report 3/2017

Interest in the analysis of private rent market increased among the Report’s readers. Despite the significant supply of new flats for rent, a steady increase in rents was noted. I would like to recommend you the commentary by Artur Kaźmierczak, Co-Managing Partner of Mzuri Group.

The housing market has been recording systematic and sustainable growth for the last few years. Buying a dwelling as a capital investment appears now to be the safest form of investing money. It is affected by low interest rates and growing uncertainty and unpredictability of government and parliamentary activities in economic regulations, which have been exemplified by changes in rules of trade in land properties and changes in rules of wind farms construction and taxation. Fortunately, this growing demand for new flats is successfully met by developers. This is evidenced by slight  but constant increase in transaction prices on housing market, observed since the beginning of 2013. It is to be hoped that the ‘Flat Plus’ Programme promoted by government will not lead to disturbances on this market.

Increasing housing demand is met in a large extend with own funds of dwellings purchasers, but in spite of this, 2017 will be the best in terms of banks’ lending activity for the past six years. After the first two record-breaking quarters of 2017, a decrease in new granted loans was noted in Q3, both in terms of number and total value. However, the level of expected by AMRON Centre mortgage lending in 2017 will amount to over PLN 40 billion with the number of loans not exceeding 200 thousand of concluded agreements. Such a result will be possible due to the systematic increase of the average value of a granted housing loan to the level of PLN 238 956, which meant an increase in the last two years by over 26 thousand (i.e. over 12.6%).

These impressive results noted by developers and banks, proving the development of the housing market, should not, however, reassure those who are (should be) responsible for solving the housing problem in our country. Over 1.2 million apartments in Poland are not equipped with bathrooms and inhabitants of half a million of dwellings do not even have an access to the tap water – according to the data published several days before by the Central Statistical Office (as of 31 December 2016).

Solving the housing problem in Poland is a civilization challenge for all of us. I would like to invite you to a careful and reflective reading of the Report and active participation in discussions during the 14th Housing Finance Congress.

Jacek Furga,Ph.D.
Head of AMRON Centre

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