“The prices of the new projects that we will put up for sale will reflect the current situation. They will most likely be slightly more expensive than their previous phases or comparable projects in the past two years,” Petr Michálek, chairman of the board of development company Skanska Residential, told Novinkám.
The price increase could already apply to projects that will go on sale in May and June. These are apartments that the company is building in Prague’s Kbely and Malešice. For example, in the first mentioned location, prices are currently around eight million crowns for three-room apartments with a size of slightly over 70 square meters. The new offer could be higher in the order of lower percentage units. It would mean that the buyers will pay an additional 200,000 crowns.
Developers are preparing to raise the prices of apartments and houses. People will buy them faster than they can build them
Economy
“We see room for price increases. We are building on the great recovery of the market. A deferred request is returned. The first quarter of this year was very strong and surprised me personally,” added Michálek.
In the first quarter, approximately 1,600 new buildings were sold in Prague. This is shown by data collected by the mentioned Skanska in cooperation with other developers Central Group and Trigema. The opening three months of the new year were one of the best in the last ten years in this regard. Year-on-year, companies sold 2.5 times more apartments.
The trend is also growing in the regions
Interest in new apartments is also reviving in the regions. Outside of Prague, developers reported 1,900 of them in the first quarter, a third more than from January to March last year.
In addition, the number of interested parties may increase if mortgages become cheaper again. “This renewed demand will clash with supply constrained by the recent cooling of construction activity, which we believe will cause apartment prices to rebound upwards for the rest of this year,” stated Vít Hradil, chief economist at Cyrrus.
The selling price of new buildings has stopped falling. In Prague, it settled at roughly 142,000 per square meter. An average 70-meter apartment will cost approximately 9.9 million crowns. During this year, according to the developers, new buildings should become more expensive by about five percent, in the model case, by about half a million. The CNB also expects a similar increase for all Czech houses and apartments.
Some of the developers do not want to raise prices directly yet. Blanka Vačkova, head of market research at the real estate consulting company iO Partners, said that some, in an effort to keep prices at the current level, are canceling the marketing discount campaigns that they introduced to support sales in recent years. Even with these companies, buyers actually pay extra.
For example, Central Group, the largest Czech developer, is currently choosing a similar procedure. “We are quite conservative. And we are glad that the demand is reviving. So we will try to keep the prices down as much as possible. But it’s true that we have already limited marketing bonuses, for example, free furnishing of the apartment, free parking space and the like,” said company owner Dušan Kunovský.
Small apartments are the fastest they can afford. Even in Prague, buying them will pay off before you pay off the mortgage
Economy
