Author
Name: Hanna Augustyniak Organisation: Narodowy Bank Polski, Warsaw, Poland Position: |
How the War between Russia and Ukraine Caused a Multi-Cycle in the Polish Housing Market
We examine the effects of the war between Russia and Ukraine on the housing market in the six largest cities in Poland and explain how these effects emerged. Since Poland’s transition to a market economy and its accession to the EU, Poland has experienced normal cycles in house prices, i.e. relatively long periods of increases in house prices followed by similarly long periods of decreases in house prices. However, the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war between Russia and Ukraine created a situation that can be described as a multi-cycle. The pandemic initially halted nearly all transactions on the market, but after a few quarters of fiscal and monetary intervention aimed at saving the economy we observed a housing boom. Just a few quarters later, the Russian aggression in Ukraine caused significant inflation, which required a sharp increase in interest rates, and once again demand slowed down. This was followed just a few quarters later by a resurgence in house purchases in order to escape inflation, with many people using cash for these purchases. This situation has shaken the housing market, while the war has also generated a demographic shock. Construction and transportation workers began returning to Ukraine to help in its reconstruction, while women with children came to Poland from Ukraine seeking safety and creating a demand for rental housing.
Understanding the Economic Situation of People Who Took a Foreign Currency Mortgage in Hungary and Poland
In this article we show that significant differences between the foreign currency mortgage agreements in Hungary and Poland led to significant differences in monthly mortgage payments after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) erupted. Hungarian banks were able to add a variable markup to the LIBOR3M that was connected to bank risk on top of the usual fixed markup. We compare the monthly mortgage payments and LTV levels of people who took out a CHF mortgage with those who obtained a local currency mortgage during the mortgage boom years of 2006–2008. We find that in the initial years of the mortgage CHF mortgages were cheaper than local currency mortgages, which allowed more people to buy housing. However, the GFC led to a deterioration of the exchange rate, and monthly payments and LTV levels (consequently?) increased. We analyse the mortgage costs and LTV levels of the 2006-2008 foreign currency (FX) mortgage vintages in Hungary and Poland between 2006 and 2020 and compare them to local currency mortgages. We also simulate the effects of changing housing prices and wages on mortgages in the cities of Budapest and Warsaw.
Why Has the COVID-19 Pandemic Had a Limited Impact on the Primary Housing Market in Poland?
In this paper we present the first insight about the impact of the COVID epidemic on the pri-mary housing market in Poland, with a focus on Warsaw which is the largest market. We ex-plain the structural features that allowed the market to return to pre-shock levels after the pandemic shock. Contrary, after the 2007-2008 global financial crisis the negative consequences lasted for several years. This time a sharp monetary policy and fiscal intervention was carried out. Moreover, the developer sector is much more mature, has expanded its production capaci-ties. We show empirically that the monopolistic competition of developers allowed them to restrict excessive demand that was observed before the COVID broke out. In this way they were able to increase prices despite the economic problems. Another important structural change was the increased housing demand, mainly for investment housing, which was fi-nanced predominantly with cash and contributed to the development of the rental market. We approximate the investment demand, which was generated by private households that pur-chased flats for rental, with the help of a simple demand and supply model.
