A record amount of new housing was delivered for use in Poland in 2021, according to new data from Statistics Poland (GUS), a state agency. The 235,000 new houses and apartments marked the highest figure in four decades, as well as an all-time record in terms of floor space.
Poland has experienced a steady rise in new homes being built year-on-year, with 207,400 units in 2019 and 222,000 last year. This year’s figure is still lower than the all-time high of 283,600 recorded in 1978, when Edward Gierek’s communist government was seeking to meet the needs of a demographic boom.
However, in terms of total floor space, this year’s figure – of 21.8 million square metres – is the highest ever. This is the result of the average size of properties increasing to 93 square metres, up from around 64 square metres in the 1970s, according to analysts Bartosz Turek and Oskar Sękowski from HRE Investments.
The growth in home-building has been fuelled by large real estate development projects. In 2021, real estate developers started building 166,000 new residences, which was 30% more than in the previous year. The number of permits issued to such companies also increased by 24% from 2020.
While the permit figures for December, at 23,500, marked a 7.1% drop relative to the same month in the previous year, some analysts warn against overinterpreting the data given that December 2020 marked a record, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP).
Other analysts have, however, heralded this as the beginning of a downturn in Poland’s real estate market, which has boomed throughout the pandemic.
“Demand is weakening, the availability of flats measured by the ratio of salaries to the price of a square metre, is falling,” wrote analysts from PKO BP, Poland’s largest bank.
They also noted that interest rates are rising, as Poland’s central bank has started tightening monetary screws amid rampant inflation.
Main image credit: PxHere (under public domain)
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
