Housing

The number of housing market transactions declined for the first time in six years during 2019, mainly due to downturns in larger cities. Prices increased on an annual basis, with a trend reversal in the second half of the year. Most homes were completed in big cities. Smaller settlements played a larger role in the second-hand housing market, with regional price differences continuing to grow. The EU saw a general price increase, with an above-average Hungarian index from the second half of 2015.

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)

In the first quarter of 2020, 4,775 new dwellings were built, 30% more than a year earlier. The number of homes to be built based on issued dwelling construction permits and simple declarations was 7,032, 27% fewer than in the same period of 2019.

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.