Sales of new apartments in Poland are up 21% year on year, reservations are reaching levels not seen since the “Safe 2% Credit” programme, and yet prices are not falling. A paradox? Not entirely. Regulations require developers to build emergency shelter spaces in new projects, stricter acoustic standards are increasing development costs, and land and construction materials are also becoming more expensive. In Warsaw, apartment prices are already rising at a rate of 14% year on year. New supply is becoming increasingly expensive, and all indications suggest that this trend will continue. Commentary by Katarzyna Kuniewicz, Market Research Director at Otodom.
Key information
Sales up 21% year on year — in May, developers sold 4,500 apartments across the seven largest markets.
7,100 apartments under reservation — a record comparable only to the period of the Safe 2% Credit programme in 2023.
A strong start to the second quarter, up 30% year on year — in April and May combined, more than 8,300 new apartments were sold, compared with 6,200 a year earlier. The current quarter is shaping up to be one of the best in years.
The development market is almost in balance. How many apartments were sold in May 2026?
“In May, sales on the development market in Poland’s largest cities reached 4,500 apartments, according to preliminary data. After a weaker April, when current supply exceeded sales, balance returned to the market. In May, developers introduced only a dozen or so fewer apartments to the market than they sold. Despite this current balance, the number of apartments offered across the seven largest markets increased by more than 400 units, or 1% month on month, and again approached 60,000,” explains Katarzyna Kuniewicz.
At the end of May, developers in Katowice, Kraków, Łódź, Poznań, the Tri-City, Warsaw and Wrocław were offering more than 59,700 apartments, 1% more than at the end of April and 4% less than in May 2025. During the month, developers introduced 4,500 units for sale, 5% more than in April and 13% less than a year earlier. Meanwhile, May sales — 4,500 units, according to preliminary data — were 12% higher than in April and as much as 21% higher year on year.
Poles still want to buy apartments. Record reservations recall the Safe 2% Credit period
As expected, the correction in apartments sold in April turned out to be much lower than in previous months and amounted to 200 units, which returned to the offer and fed the pool of reserved apartments. At the end of May, Otodom recorded another record number of reserved apartments across the seven markets: 7,100 units had this status. A higher number of reservations in the seven largest markets was recorded only in 2023, during the operation of the Safe 2% Credit programme.
“The strong interest in buying a new apartment is also confirmed by the regularly growing number of monthly reservations in recent months — more than 3,100 in May alone — which is a measure of potential buyers’ activity on the development market,” adds Otodom’s Market Research Director.
Where does demand exceed supply, and where is the opposite true?
The relationship between apartments introduced and sold in May on individual markets shows that the current demand-supply balance in aggregated data is, paradoxically, the result of imbalances on individual markets. In May, demand exceeded supply in Wrocław, Łódź and Katowice. In Warsaw, Kraków and the Tri-City, supply was higher than current sales. Only in Poznań were monthly launches and sales almost at the same level.
“Because both developers’ activity and the process of making a decision to buy an apartment take months, not days or weeks, analyses based solely on monthly data can lead to incorrect conclusions. Demand and supply data in particular should be compared using aggregates covering several or even a dozen months,” says Katarzyna Kuniewicz.
The volume of apartments sold and introduced for sale over the past 12 months shows that only in the Tri-City was the number of apartments sold lower than the number introduced to the market by developers. In the remaining markets, 12-month sales were higher than the new supply launched during that period.
How long do developers need to sell out their offer?
A direct effect of the demand advantage over supply observed in recent months is a reduction in the time needed to sell out the available offer. Across all seven analysed markets, Otodom recorded clearly lower sell-out indicators.
The shortest sell-out period is in Warsaw, where the indicator is currently only 3.3 quarters. This means that, assuming the current sales pace and no new launches, the entire available pool of apartments would disappear from the market in less than 10 months.
The longest sell-out period is in Katowice, where the offer sell-out time is 10.1 quarters, or more than two and a half years.
Forecasts for the development market. Will Q2 2026 bring record apartment sales?
Data from the development market over the past two months may give developers grounds for optimism in their forecasts for the second quarter. After two months — April and May — the number of apartments introduced for sale is equal to the new supply recorded in the first quarter. It is therefore certain that the second quarter will be clearly better than the first in terms of supply. The most likely scenario for the volume of new supply in the whole of Q2 is 12,000–12,500 apartments introduced for sale. This would be a result close to that recorded in the final quarter of 2025.
“May’s results also allow for the first preliminary forecasts regarding sales in the second quarter of 2026. There is no doubt that the April and May sales volumes positively surprised analysts, who had reason to fear a strong negative impact of the conflict in the Middle East on the housing market in Poland’s largest cities. In the same months of 2025, the number of apartments sold across Poland’s seven largest markets amounted to 6,200 units. In the same period of 2026, mainly thanks to good sales in May, effective demand, meaning transactions, exceeded 8,300 apartments, which means growth of more than 30% year on year,” says Katarzyna Kuniewicz.
How much does a new apartment cost in Poland?
One of the sources of moderate optimism regarding sales performance in the coming months is shown by the chart of average apartment prices offered on individual markets. In most markets, average prices per square metre are still rising, which generally does not support sales growth. There is no doubt that in Warsaw, Poznań and Wrocław, the growth of average prices of new apartments is accelerating.
It is worth noting, however, that June, as the month closing the quarter, may encourage greater price flexibility on the part of developers. In larger companies, sales teams are rewarded for quarterly results, so the willingness to offer discounts and price reductions should be clearly higher in June than in April and May.
PLN 8,600 per square metre difference between Łódź and Warsaw. Prices are falling only in Katowice
May price data show that new apartment prices increased year on year in six of the seven main markets. Importantly, two clear extremes that had already been visible became even stronger in May. At one end, there are increasingly strong price increases on the Warsaw market; at the other, strong stabilisation of offer prices in Łódź and Katowice. The difference between the average asking price in Warsaw and Łódź has already reached a record PLN 8,600 per square metre. While the capital, with prices exceeding PLN 20,000 per square metre, is testing Warsaw buyers, Katowice and Łódź offer hope that prices may soon be lower there.
“Average asking prices of new apartments in Warsaw do not want to stop rising. Moreover, the dynamics of this trend are clearly accelerating. While in March the year-on-year increase was 8.8%, and in April 11.5%, in May it already reached 14%. The main reason for this change remains the high prices of new supply. For several months, developers have been introducing apartments for sale that are clearly more expensive than those previously on offer,” says Katarzyna Kuniewicz, Market Research Director at Otodom.
In May, although the highest average prices in new projects were recorded in Warsaw, the most surprising figure was the level of prices of apartments introduced to the Wrocław market. Last month, 300 units were launched there at an average price of PLN 19,600 per square metre. At the same time, more than 700 apartments were sold at PLN 13,900 per square metre. These extreme values mean that one square metre in the capital of Lower Silesia now costs an average of PLN 15,100 — 1.6% more month on month and 7.3% more than a year earlier.
New supply is more expensive for specific reasons. Stricter acoustic standards, the obligation to build emergency shelter spaces and still-rising land prices are now additional components of every cost estimate. Developers are therefore not pushing prices up voluntarily; they simply have no way to build more cheaply.
Asking prices versus transaction prices. How much do buyers really pay for a new apartment in 2026?
“When reporting changes in the prices of apartments offered by developers, one must not forget the differences between average asking prices and transaction prices. We track these rates in parallel, knowing that it is transaction prices that tell us the most about the financial capacity of Polish residents,” explains Katarzyna Kuniewicz.
It is worth emphasising that, unlike average prices of apartments on offer, prices of apartments actually sold are still characterised by a stabilisation trend, not a growth trend. In Poland’s largest housing markets, differences between average prices of apartments offered and sold in May ranged from PLN 800 per square metre in Poznań to as much as PLN 2,600 per square metre in Warsaw. The only market where average prices of apartments offered and sold in May were almost identical was Katowice.
Source: Managerplus.pl
