Tower's experts answered the questions of Financial Times. The Hungarian real estate market – and primarily that of Budapest's – is booming for several reasons.
The news about the refugee crisis put Budapest in a negative light in past months but this luckily had no effect on the market, and experts agree that there will be no lasting effect of it.
The market is also showing great success in recovery after the financial crisis. Property moves, transactions and investments that were put on hold in the years of economic uncertainty are taking place now, people have more trust in their jobs, their salaries and the overall state of the economy.
The market is surging for almost two years now, the upward trend began in 2013 and shows no signs of stopping in the coming months.
Property once again became a preferred form of investment and not just for Hungarian investors. Many of those who appeared on the market in the last few years were big international players. Most of the apartments in the popular inner districts of Budapest are already too expensive for the local buyers, Krisztina Mészáros, sales partner of Tower International told Financial Times.
FT also quotes András Cornides, a property investments partner at Tower International who told the newspaper that many foreigners move to prime Hungarian estates because the life in Hungary is much cheaper than in Western Europe. They work for Western companies and earn a salary with which they can "live here like a king".
Chinese buyers are also common in Budapest as they see the Hungarian capital as a base through which they can access the EU.
Budapest is also showing signs of a transformation. Many parts of cheaper districts are being renovated, new cultural hubs are appearing and public transportation is improving. A lot of districts which are traditionally cheaper by magnitudes than Buda and inner Pest are benefiting from this and are expected to experience a surge in coming years.
(Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/13f74b06-679b-11e5-a57f-21b88f7d973f.html)
