Ten years of Poland in the European Union – a view from the residential market

Ten years in the European Union has changed many aspects of life in Poland, including the residential market. In this period we have emerged from through two main stages. The first stage occurred in 2004–2008: the boom. In this period we saw very high demand perpetuated by easy access to cheap loans denominated in Swiss francs. Unfortunately, the demand considerably outstripped the supply, which fuelled rapid price increases, thus reducing the availability of apartments to average buyers. Just as the collapse of Lehman Brothers was the symbolic beginning of the global credit crunch, for the Polish residential market the transfer from boom to bust was symbolised by the end of cheap loans in francs. The second stage, the financial crisis, took place in 2009–2014. It was not a completely disastrous period because about the same number of apartments were built over this period than during the boom. The basic difference was that due to the withdrawal of speculative buyers from