January brought another increase in supply on the developer market in Poland. In the seven largest markets in the country, developers introduced 5.3 thousand apartments to their portfolio – 42% more than the previous month and 95% more compared to the same period last year. The increase in supply was led by three cities – Warsaw, Łódź, and surprisingly, Wrocław, where the most new units hit the market in nearly three years. Data from Otodom Analytics reveals that the sale of developer apartments performed better than in December, but it remains lower than during the BK2% policy era.
Regarding sales, January did not bring many surprises. 4.5 thousand sold developer apartments were close to the November result and slightly better than December (+11% m/m). However, the year-on-year landscape is much more striking – developers sold 62% more apartments in January 2024 than a year earlier.
There was an even larger difference in the number of introductions. According to Otodom Analytics, in January this year, the number of newly introduced apartments in the seven biggest markets in Poland increased by 42% m/m and 95% y/y. As a result, at the end of January, developers had 40.7 thousand apartments available, the best result in nine months.
“The gradual increase in the offer of developer flats, which we have been observing for four months, is not only the result of the BK2% effect fading on the demand side, but also the higher number of flats introduced for sale. The small number of flats that developer companies have been selling over the past few months has strengthened the belief on the demand side of the market that flat prices can only increase. The January result allows us to include in the price forecasts a scenario for the formation of nominal flat prices at the level of inflation, which would mean a stabilization of real prices,” comments Katarzyna Kuniewicz, director of research at Otodom Analytics.
In January, the most new offers of developer apartments appeared in Wrocław, Warsaw, and Łódź, accounting for 67% of all new introductions that month. According to the latest Otodom Analytics data, developers added over 1,100 units in each of these cities, and the difference between the first-placed Wrocław and third-placed Łódź was only 40 apartments.
In Łódź, for example, we saw an atypical setup, where the new supply exceeded the sale. As a result, there were over 7.7 thousand units available on the Łódź developer market at the end of January, which is 46% more than a year earlier. This puts Łódź in total opposition to other major Polish cities, where the offer compared to last year shrunk by an average of several percent.
Despite the growth in supply, January brought a period of price stabilization, with Łódź recording almost a 5% increase. This made Łódź the last of the seven largest markets in Poland to break the barrier of 10,000 PLN per square meter. In Warsaw, the price per square meter of a developer apartment is nearly 16.5 thousand PLN, which is 17% more than a year ago. In the Tri-City and Krakow, buyers will pay about 15,000 PLN per square meter, an increase of about one quarter from a year ago. In Wrocław, buyers will pay an average of about 13,000 PLN per square meter, and in Poznań – just over 12,000 PLN per square meter.
