150,000 Polish zloty for a 16-meter garage in the center of Szczecin? Advertisements like these should no longer be surprising. Especially considering that underground parking spaces already cost… 89,000 zloty, and a guaranteed ‘open-air’ space in housing estates can reach up to 50,000 zloty. A parking space in new housing estates and city centers has become a luxury item – and luxury needs to be paid for. Therefore, more and more people are deciding to buy apartments, but without buying a garage. The times when a parking space was a promotional addition to the purchase of a property have definitively passed. There are more and more cars, less and less space, and whatever is in deficit always costs a lot – says Mirosław Król, a real estate market expert.
The more cars, the more expensive garages and parking spaces. “Regulation always leads to price increases”
High prices for garages and parking spaces in big cities are not surprising. This price increase has been visible for several years, but in recent months it is even more noticeable than the actual price increase of the apartments themselves. As Mirosław Król, a real estate market expert, says, the prices of garages in the context of the price per square meter are already proportional to the price… of a bachelor apartment from a decade ago.
– “10 years ago, for the price of today’s garage, you could buy a bachelor’s apartment. A brick garage in the open air in Szczecin costs over 100,000 zloty. A tin garage costs a bit less. The city center naturally sets records, where a garage in the Hanza Tower vicinity could cost up to 160,000 zloty. Similar prices are seen in cities like Poznań or Wrocław. We will pay even more in Krakow and in Warsaw, where these prices have long been reaching 200,000 zloty. Are there buyers for such garages? This is still more of a lease market rather than a sale. Sometimes it is more profitable for the owner to rent a parking space,” says Mirosław Król.
As the expert adds, a garage could be rented for the proverbial “hundred” in the past. Currently, the rate is 500-600 zloty a month.
– “In the city centers, we have a real glut of cars. One car after another. On average, there are two vehicles per one family. It’s no wonder that there is certain regulation of space, which always leads to a price increase,” says Mirosław Król.
It’s not cheap in a garage either. Want to park? Pay a fortune!
Despite the prices, are garages and parking spaces in garages attractive to consumers? It varies. It happens that tenants buy an apartment, but give up the spot in the underground car park, even if they have a car. This comes out of the desire to save money. However, it also happens that the parking space is part of a separate transaction, which significantly increases the price of the property. The “Apartment + garage” offer is becoming more and more of a rarity in new development projects.
– “The effect of this is estates crammed with cars and blocked sidewalks. People do not want to pay 100,000 zlotys for parking spaces marked on concrete in large underground facilities. Their prices have significantly increased in recent years. In the largest cities in Poland, a place in the garage is a cost from 70 to even 100 thousand. These are very high prices,” says Mirosław Król.
There are no prospects for lowering the prices of parking spaces and garages.
– “There will not be more and more of such places being created, but there certainly are more and more cars driving on the streets in Poland. It is natural that the prices will not fall, but rise. It is hard to say what the ceiling for garage prices in Poland is. It seems like the barrier would be 50,000 zloty, then 100 thousand, and now we see that these amounts were exceeded long time ago,” says Mirosław Król.
