Housing

In 2019, the number of housing market transactions fell by 8.0% based on data processed so far, the first decline in six years. There were more transactions in villages and fewer in bigger settlements, the bigger the settlement the bigger the decline. In 2019, price indices (2015=100%) for second-hand and new homes stood at 167% and 166% respectively, up 15% and 11% respectively from a year earlier. In the first quarter of 2020, price indices for second-hand (173%) and new dwellings (164%) reached and approached (165%) their previous peaks, respectively.

Data related on settlements and districts of Budapest in the Dissemination database are updated twice this year, as such part of the 2019 serial settlement and district data, among others about housing stock, home building, dwelling cessation are available from 31 July, four months earlier than it was customary before.

In the first half of 2020, 8,697 new dwellings were built, 34% more than a year earlier. The number of homes to be built based on issued dwelling construction permits and simple declarations was 12,475, 32% less than in the same period of 2019. There were already signs of recovery in June.

At the end of 2019, housing loans totalled HUF 3,632 billion, 9.3% more than at the end of 2018, with these loans accounting for 55% of all household loans. In terms of volume, loan approvals increased by 6.3% and disbursements by 6.5%. On average, one in six of the more than half a million housing transactions realized between the first half of 2016 and 2019 benefited from the CSOK grant opportunity. In 2019, disbursed housing allowance grants increased by 9.7% in number (to 34 thousand) and by 21% in volume (to HUF 86 billion)

On 1 January 2020, the Hungarian housing stock consisted of almost 4 million 475 thousand dwellings, increasing by 19 thousand in 2019 as the balance of dwellings built and terminated. In connection with the housing construction boom, the Hungarian housing stock has been growing at an increasing rate since 2016, with an overall increase of 1.9% since the 2011 census. As a result of housing growth and population decline, an average of 218 people lived in one hundred dwellings at the beginning of the year, 1 person fewer than a year earlier.

The yearbook is a data compilation on construction permits and simple declarations, dwelling constructions and cessations, housing stock, housing market and the management of municipalities. Data on average construction costs and the main figures of housing loans as well as data of dwellings purchased by the National Asset Management Company are also available here.