In November, developer promotions attracted homebuyers, leading to a clear decline in sales of second-hand apartments. According to experts from the GetHome.pl portal, this trend likely did not affect major metropolitan areas, where housing supply has been shrinking for months, resulting, in several cases, in rising prices.
“Primary and secondary markets are fiercely competing for buyers. It looks like developers were the winners again in November. At the end of the year, they tend to seize any opportunity—and Black Friday is one of them—to lure buyers with special offers,” says Marek Wielgo, an expert at GetHome.pl.
He explains that for this reason, demand for second-hand apartments across the country was noticeably lower than a month earlier. According to data from Adradar, a real-estate listings search engine, 31,000 unique second-hand listings disappeared from the market in November—an 11% drop compared with October. The only month with weaker sales performance this year was January. At the same time, relatively few new listings were added—just 29,000. As a result, 147,000 apartments were available at the end of the month, 1% fewer than in October and 7% fewer than a year ago.
Wielgo notes that this decline in demand for second-hand homes likely does not apply to the largest metropolitan areas. According to Adradar, Poznań, for example, saw its listings shrink sharply for the second consecutive month: by 3% in October and by another 8% in November (to 3.6 thousand units).
“This is a sign that demand in metropolitan areas remains strong despite the nationwide decline,” the GetHome.pl expert comments.
The situation is similar in other major cities. According to Adradar, November saw reductions of:
• 4% in Łódź (to 5.3 thousand) and Katowice (to 2.3 thousand),
• 3% in Wrocław (to 8.9 thousand) and Kraków (to 8.6 thousand),
• 1% in Warsaw (to 17.5 thousand).
The expert highlights that the supply of used apartments in metropolitan areas has been decreasing since April. This coincided with the cycle of interest rate cuts, which improved mortgage availability. Since then, the secondary-market supply has shrunk by:
• 28% in Kraków,
• 27% in Warsaw,
• 25% in Poznań,
• 24% in Wrocław.
At the same time, supply in the primary market continued to grow. In the largest cities, the number of developer offerings reached record highs. Consequently, sellers in the secondary market could not afford to raise prices. On the contrary—many began lowering them already at the listing stage.
According to GetHome.pl data, in November, the average price per square meter of second-hand apartments was lower than a year earlier in four metropolitan areas:
• down 4% in Kraków,
• down 3% in Warsaw,
• down 2% in Wrocław,
• down 1% in Poznań.
The leader in price growth was the Tri-City (Gdańsk–Gdynia–Sopot), where the average price per square meter was 4% higher than a year before. Increases were also recorded in Łódź (+3%), which remains the cheapest metropolitan area, and in Katowice (+1%).
November brought continued price stability in Kraków (around PLN 16,900 per sq m) and Łódź (around PLN 8,800 per sq m). A 1% decline occurred in Warsaw (to around PLN 17,800 per sq m) and Katowice (to around PLN 11,600 per sq m). Meanwhile, three metropolitan areas recorded a 1% increase in average prices per square meter:
• the Tri-City – to approx. PLN 16,400 per sq m,
• Wrocław – to PLN 14,200 per sq m,
• Poznań – to approx. PLN 11,800 per sq m.
