Typical housing on the primary market of Prague is located 17 minutes by car from the center
Standard of typical housing
According to a survey by the Institute of Planning and Development (IPR), typical housing offered in Prague is located 17 minutes by car from the city center (travel by public transport takes 34 minutes), half a kilometer from a park or green spaces, in a sparsely populated area or microdistrict on the outskirts of the city.
"Most housing projects are currently emerging in the fifth and ninth districts of Prague. Only 11% of projects are planned near metro stations and 30% near tram lines. The predominance of peripheral development, however, exacerbates the traffic congestion situation," said Tomas Lapacek, director of the IPR strategy section.
At the end of September, according to an analysis of construction companies' activities, 13,206 housing units were being built in 118 projects in the capital. The average area of apartments under construction was 82.7 square meters, and the average cost of such a "nest" was about 7 million crowns (270,000 euros).
Housing in the capital of the Czech Republic is getting more expensive
The study confirmed that real estate prices in Prague on the new housing market have increased by more than 30% over the past two years. In 2015, a square meter of new housing in the Czech capital cost an average of 57,120 crowns (almost 2,197 euros); in 2017, its price rose to 75,000 crowns (2,884 euros).
However, the average gross salary is growing more slowly than housing prices, so the prospect of housewarming in new middle-level residential complexes is becoming increasingly distant even for representatives of the middle class, analysts note. At the same time, according to forecasts, the population of the Czech capital should increase by at least 300,000 people by 2050.
New trend – mini-apartments
A new phenomenon is observed on the Prague real estate market: a growing number of miniature apartments in historic buildings in the very center of the city. Under sonorous names hide residential complexes that share one thing: they consist of one-room apartments whose size does not exceed 20 square meters.
There are several old buildings that have turned into apartment buildings as a result of major renovations in the center of Prague. For example, the average area of apartments in one of the houses on Spalena Street is 23.7 meters, and they cost a lot of money by Czech standards: the price per square meter hovers around 180,000 crowns (7,400 euros). A record in this regard is a living space on Prague's Kampa of 13 square meters (14,000 euros per square meter).
According to the owners of residential complexes, cited by the publication Hospodářské noviny, demand for mini-apartments is quite high and stable, and they are purchased by both Czechs and foreigners, mainly as an investment.
"The trend in the real estate market in the Prague 1 district is a reduction in apartment sizes to such an extent that in some cases it is already difficult to speak of 'apartments,'" confirms real estate analyst František Brož. The area of apartments put up for sale in the center of the Czech capital has halved since 2014 – from 110 meters to less than 50.
Based on materials from "Radio Prague"