Pełczyńska-Nałęcz: Salaries have been growing faster than housing prices for a year now
The affordability of apartments has been growing steadily since Q2 2024, with the increase in availability ranging from 7% to 19%, said Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz, Minister of Funds and Regional Policy, on Saturday. She emphasized that this effect would not have been possible without, among other things, the cancellation of the 0% loan.
"We have collected data and there is hard evidence - for a year now, salaries have been growing faster than housing prices," wrote Minister of Funds and Regional Policy Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz on Platform X on Saturday. "We haven't had a situation like this for years. What does that mean? That housing is becoming more affordable. And on the other hand, their current owners are not getting poorer - everyone wins, well, maybe except for developers," she emphasized.
To confirm her words, the Minister posted charts on the X portal showing the price affordability of apartments in cities such as Kraków, Warsaw, Lublin and Szczecin from Q2 2024 to Q1 2025. She explained that the data concerns the average transaction price per square meter of apartments sold in a given quarter in a given city and the average gross salary in a given quarter in a given voivodeship.
Half of political X is dealing with issues very important to the average person today. So I'll write about something else for a change.
We have collected data and there is hard evidence – salaries have been growing faster than housing prices for a year. This has not happened for years. What does this mean? That… pic.twitter.com/IkHoJxKZbS
"The +affordability+ calculated in this way has been growing steadily since Q2 2024. The increase in availability ranges from +7% to +19%," the minister emphasized. She pointed out that this effect of availability would not have been possible without specific actions. "Cancelling the 0% loan, - an unequivocal NO attitude towards REITs, which influenced investors' decisions, - the act on the transparency of housing prices, which introduces transparency to the real estate market and curbs offer manipulations - which is another important price-setting signal," she listed. "We are moving forward! And we are not looking sideways," she added.
Marcin Drogomirecki, a real estate market expert from the Warsaw Association of Real Estate Agents, asked by PAP for a comment, agreed with Pełczyńska-Nałęcz's opinion.
"Both on the primary and secondary markets, the price per square meter to the average salary has been improving for many months, which means that the availability of apartments for the average person has been growing for a long time. In short, with the average salary we can buy more and more square meters of apartments each month," admitted Drogomirecki.
He also referred to the impact of the "erasure" of the 0% mortgage on this situation. "The end of the program, slowly falling interest rates, which also reduce the cost of mortgages - all this makes apartments more accessible - but also the slowdown in demand artificially fueled by the previous loan introduced by the PiS government," Drogomirecki noted. He pointed out that the slowdown in demand has resulted in a much greater supply of apartments, much greater flexibility of sellers and, as he pointed out, a much greater choice of apartments on the market.
In response to PAP's question about whether this trend will continue, the expert said: "At the moment it seems that this will be a lasting trend, that we will be dealing with stabilization, or rather, I would say: normalization of the situation on the apartment sales market."
"But you never know what might happen on the market, in the economic and financial sphere, that could destabilize the market," he added. He also emphasized that he currently looks at the real estate market "optimistically."
"I think the situation there will be stable, which we have been waiting for for many years," said Drogomirecki.
The expert noted that there are different prices and different salaries in different locations in Poland. "However, in general, the situation is stabilizing on a national scale and the availability of apartments will gradually increase. As salaries increase, of course," he said.
In his opinion, the greatest increase in the availability of apartments was recorded in smaller cities, where prices in recent years have not increased as rapidly as in Warsaw or Krakow. "For example, in Olsztyn, Lublin, Katowice," Drogomirecki pointed out.
According to data from Otodom Analytics, in the first five months of 2025, developers introduced 20.9 thousand apartments to the market, and demand responded with the purchase of 15.3 thousand apartments, which led to an increase in the offer to 62 thousand apartments in the seven largest markets.
Sales of new apartments in June this year fell by 8.7 percent compared to May, and in most cases prices have not changed over the last two months - according to the Housing Price Barometer on the Tabelaofert.pl portal. Year-on-year, prices are higher by 6.1 percent.
As reported in the GetHome.pl report, after the stabilization of the offer on the secondary market in May, June brought a decrease in all metropolises. The most – by 5% – it shrank in Warsaw (to 18.3 thousand premises) and Poznań (to 3.9 thousand). There were 4% fewer apartments on the secondary market than in May in Wrocław (10 thousand premises), Łódź (5.5 thousand) and Katowice (2.3 thousand), by 3% - Kraków (9.5 thousand) and by 1% - in the Tri-City (8.9 thousand).
Experts point out that the average price per square meter of second-hand apartments in Warsaw and Krakow has been falling for a year now. As a result, it is 4 percent lower. Over the past 12 months, it has increased the most in the Tricity (by 4 percent). In Poznań, it has not changed, in the Upper Silesian-Zagłębie Metropolis and Łódź, it is higher than a year ago by 2 percent, and in Wrocław – by 1 percent. (PAP)
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