CENY mieszkań: JEDYNY film, który musisz obejrzeć i zrozumieć rynek. Katarzyna Kuniewicz

Business context: what’s driving apartment market “overheating” and price signaling (Poland, large cities)

Demographic vs. pricing mismatch

• Poland faces a demographic “catastrophe” in the housing demand base for the next decade, but this decade is unusually favorable.
• The “active” cohorts buying apartments are not the youngest (e.g., 25-year-olds). Demand is mainly concentrated in 30–40s and 40–50s, especially households:
  • upgrading location/quality, or
  • exchanging an existing apartment.

Core supply-side reason for price pressure/volatility

• There is high apartment offer, especially in the primary/developer market.
• Selling cycles are longer than during the 2020–2021 “euphoria” period.
• This is compounded by credit-program announcements (e.g., BK2.0 / “safe 2%”, then “0%”, etc.):
  • these created demand spikes,
  • while developers’ confidence lagged.

---

Primary vs. secondary market mechanics (and why “average price” rises without core listings changing)

Key claim

• Media-reported “price increases” are often driven by statistics about the average, rather than widespread repricing of the same inventory.

Observed pattern in the developer/primary offer

Late-2023 method

• Analyze apartments offered at end of Dec 2023, then track price changes over the next ~3 months.
• Results:
  • 60–70% of offered apartments saw price increases.
  • ~2–3% saw price reductions.
  • Price reductions were paradoxically more common in the most expensive projects (about 1–2%).

Current method

• Repeat analysis after the offer grew.
• Offer increased from ~35,000 to ~60,000 apartments.
• Findings:
  • ~75% of the current offer shows no meaningful price change (the “core” holds).

Why the average increases anyway (pricing math / selection effect)

• Price-sensitive buyers remove cheaper units from the available pool.
• Developers add new, more expensive projects on top.
• The remaining sample therefore skews toward higher prices, pushing the average upward.

Median vs. average

• Average can rise even when many listings are unchanged.
• Median (the middle-priced unit) can show different dynamics.
• Example (Warsaw, end of July, PLN):
  • Average: ~2047 PLN/m² (as stated)
  • Median: ~17–18k PLN (as described, indicating an expensive-share predominance)

---

Credit-program timeline as an operational demand trigger (and why it created supply “bloat”)

Framework: “demand believes → developers lag → offer stays high → later demand backs off”

• When the market expected low financing costs:
  • developers did not launch new supply aggressively at first,
  • buyers reserved earlier (reservation ≠ purchase), creating backlog/option value.

Key milestones mentioned

• Pandemic (2020): builders paused or changed launch behavior; sales improved later partly due to construction visibility.
• Interest rates near 0.1% → 2021 euphoria.
• 2022: war + inflation + higher rates → market deterioration and uncertainty-driven “hold” behavior.
• Dec 2022: Minister Buda announces “safe 2% mortgage” from mid-year.
• Demand spike mechanism:
  • buyers reserved massively in the early period (especially January),
  • purchases appeared later (Feb–Mar).
• Apr/May 2023: KNF change lowering the buffer in creditworthiness calculations → more eligible buyers enter, boosting loan-driven demand.
• Oct 2023: offer grew strongly (example: ~32k to ~67k in the narrative).
• 2023 elections → talk of an even cooler 0% mortgage:
  • some developers expected programs to continue and postponed/redirected decisions.
• Late 2023 → 2024:
  • as prices rose sharply and programs ended, demand cooled,
  • but developers still had supply—keeping the offer elevated.

---

Concrete metrics / KPIs mentioned (market “inputs” and leading indicators)

Supply & offer

• Seven largest cities:
  • about ~60,000 apartments offered (primary) plus ~7,000 under reservation
• Total primary availability discussed: ~67,000
• Earlier snapshot:
  • ~40,000 apartments offered (primary) during a “frozen” period

Secondary vs. primary price gaps (examples)

• Kraków: secondary can be slightly higher than primary
• Katowice & Łódź: primary tends to be higher than secondary
• Other example:
  • Warsaw switched from secondary > primary about 6 months prior, driven by developers adjusting launch strategy

Demand leading indicator

• Reservations (primary) are treated as a leading indicator for eventual sales.
• After “safe 2%” era:
  • reservation behavior spiked (e.g., Jan 2023-type),
  • for the past ~4 months, reservations were higher than during the safe-2% run-up.
• Order-of-magnitude flows:
  • Baseline monthly sales example: ~44,100 apartments/month
  • Within-a-month “new reservations”: up to ~2,700
  • Conversion to “permanent reservations” within ~2.5 months: up to ~2,900
  • Persistent reservation resource: ~6,000–7,000

Growth rates (illustrative)

• Tricity:
  • year-on-year ~16–17% during the “jump” period
  • then month-to-month ~0.5–0.7 on the plateau; year-on-year normalized later
• Warsaw:
  • “Jump” dynamics drove ~14–15% year-on-year growth
  • expected decline in growth dynamics by April of the next year

---

City-by-city examples (case studies of “statistical jumps” and buyer psychology)

Tricity (Gdańsk/Gdynia/Sopot)

• Experienced a vanguard statistical jump:
  • new developer projects priced ~20–30% (phrased as “2030% more expensive”)
  • above market averages.
• Produced a V-shaped artifact in year-on-year comparisons.
• Once the base period normalized, growth rates fell sharply.

Warsaw

• Similar jump pattern later:
  • new projects launched at much higher prices in Q1–Q2
  • large projects introduced in June (example locations/areas cited as 12k and 14k)
• Secondary market “joins” primary via psychological anchoring:
  • secondary sellers face buyer resistance to overpaying,
  • but demand expectations can still lift prices.

Łódź

• More “resistant” to the jump due to weaker historical developer supply:
  • secondary stock is older/lower-quality
  • average at about ~8k vs primary ~11–12k PLN/m².

Kraków

• Behaves unusually:
  • primary reservation growth: ~+2% YoY
  • secondary “responses to ads” growth: ~+6% YoY
• Also noted:
  • longer buyer decision-making cycles
  • outflow beyond administrative borders toward single-family housing.

---

Rental market link (why the same “average” distortion happens via offer cream-skimming)

Mechanism

• After the Feb 2022 refugee wave, the rental offer drops quickly because displaced tenants and lease holders vacate and cheapest units are taken first.
• Example:
  • Warsaw “offer” fell from ~100 apartments to ~30 apartments within ~2 months.
  • remaining listings skew toward higher-end (“cream”) units → average rent rises rapidly.

Research pitfall

• Portal rental data typically reflects only what is still offered, not realized rents across all rented units.
• Actual realized rents are not fully observable due to:
  • lease duration
  • contract carryover

Result

• Rising average rents can be a composition effect, not purely an increase in underlying rent levels.

---

Policy & regulatory impact: how announcements distort the market (beyond enacted programs)

Core operational claim

• Even discussions/announcements (not only implementation) deform behavior.

Examples

• BK2.0 / safe mortgages / “0% mortgage” talk
  • created speculative reservations and timing shifts for both buyers and developers
  • later withdrawal led to demand “waiting” (“let’s see”) while supply remained high
• Tax on the third apartment (cadastral proposals)
  • described as potentially 25x-scale progression (relative framing to first/second)
  • expected behavior:
    • older owners (70+) may sell/leave cheaper regions,
    • descendants may want to buy in major cities
• Short-term rental regulation
  • emphasized as Warsaw-centric, with registration needed for transparency
  • expected business effect:
    • better enforcement—removed/penalized listings can’t be published on platforms
  • impact may be local (e.g., potentially Kraków) rather than uniform across cities
  • scale mentioned:
    • short-term rentals ~80k (or ~90k) units
    • mostly concentrated in Kraków and Warsaw (Tricity also mentioned)

---

Data/analytics playbook: how Otodom collects data—and where it can mislead

Framework: “multi-source inventory tracking + status-based correction”

• Primary market
  • more regulated due to price transparency rules
• Otodom monitoring:
  • tracks apartments by monitoring all listings’ status daily across voivodeship capitals
  • calculates city-level metrics
  • status flow includes:
    • offered → reserved → sold
    • and crucially: sold → back to offered (returns)

Why they adjust sales retroactively

• If a developer marks something “sold” but it later returns to “offered,” analysts remove it from past sales counts to avoid double-counting.

Pitfall from transparency rules

• Developers may label units as “sold/reserved” to avoid showing price history (rules apply to “offered” units).
• This can distort sale datasets:
  • example correction scale:
    • up to ~300 corrections out of ~4,200 “sold”
    • later reduced to about ~100 corrections

Implied actionable recommendation

• Don’t rely on portal snapshots alone.
• Use status tracking and back-corrections for returned listings.

---

Marketing/sales leadership implications (what the “strategy” message really is)

For developers/sellers

• Average-price reporting can shape buyer psychology:
  • buyers may conclude “prices are going up everywhere,” even if the core inventory is stable
• Transparency about day-to-day price changes may create artificial urgency if prices bounce
• Developers may still test pricing through partial releases (batching/hiding parts of inventory) while remaining compliant.

For investors/agents

• Use reservations and leading indicators—not only sale counts.
• Understand that average price ≠ market-clearing price.

---

Presenters / sources

• Katarzyna Kuniewicz — Director of Market Research, Otodom (housing market analyst; 20+ years)
• Grzegorz Grabowski — Partner, WMP Accounting and Advisory; runs Wynajmistrz channel/website (accounting/tax framing in the intro)