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SUMMARY
Warsaw's property market is heading toward a busier but more selective phase: transactions are recovering strongly, while prices are more likely to rise slowly and unevenly than surge across the whole city.
The turnaround is already visible in sales and mortgages. New-home sales remain above their five-year quarterly average, while mortgage lending has risen far faster than property prices.
Recent declines in Warsaw's average new-build price are not evidence of a broad correction. Cheaper projects entering the market have pulled the arithmetic average down even though the median price is still around 5% higher than a year ago.
Supply has increased, but Warsaw does not yet look oversupplied. Developers launched roughly as many homes as buyers purchased over the past year, although the growing share of completed unsold apartments gives buyers more room to negotiate.
Lower mortgage costs are likely to lift transaction volumes before they lift prices dramatically. Warsaw apartments are already expensive enough that better financing helps affordability without suddenly making PLN 1 million homes cheap.
The strongest response to easier credit should come in affordable, well-connected districts such as Targówek, Ursus and Białołęka. A modest increase in borrowing capacity changes the market much more at PLN 14,000–16,000/m² than it does in central districts above PLN 25,000/m².
The resale market looks softer than developer headline prices suggest. Older apartments face competition from renovation costs, developer incentives and a larger pool of alternatives, which should keep negotiation more common there.
Warsaw's rental market remains healthy, but rents are not rising quickly enough to justify paying almost any purchase price. Gross yields around 5%–6% can work, particularly for cash buyers, but financing and operating costs leave much less room for leveraged investors.
A serious citywide decline would probably require several things to weaken together: mortgage demand, employment and apartment absorption, while completed inventory continued to build. Current data point in almost the opposite direction.
The base case is therefore low-to-mid single-digit nominal price growth over the next year, with much wider differences underneath. Good affordable apartments may outperform, overpriced resale homes may barely move, and another sharper upswing becomes more likely if cheaper mortgages drain affordable inventory faster than developers can replace it.
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Has the Warsaw property market already turned around?
Yes. Warsaw's property market is clearly busier again, but the recovery in sales is running ahead of the recovery in prices.
CBRE counted 3,840 new-home sales in Warsaw in the second quarter of 2026. That was below an unusually strong first quarter, but still 4.6% above the average quarterly pace of the previous five years. Across the preceding 12 months, buyers purchased 15,986 new homes, 38.5% more than during the previous 12-month period.
Mortgage activity has come back even faster. According to BIK, Polish banks granted 45.5% more housing loans in the first seven months of 2026 than a year earlier, while the total value lent jumped 57.2%. July alone brought 33.1% more mortgages and 45.3% more lending by value than a year before.
Prices have been much less dramatic. Warsaw's average new-build asking price recently fell for a second consecutive month, while resale asking prices have been moving only slightly faster than inflation.
Buyers are back in force. They just aren't chasing every apartment at any price.
| Warsaw market measure | Latest reading | Comparison | What we learn |
|---|---|---|---|
| New homes sold in Q2 | 3,840 | +4.6% vs five-year quarterly average | Sales are healthy |
| New homes sold over 12 months | 15,986 | +38.5% | Recovery is substantial |
| New-build average asking price | PLN 19,568/m² | +10% YoY | Headline prices remain high |
| New-build median asking price | PLN 17,400/m² | +5% YoY | Typical homes are rising much more slowly |
| Mortgage value, Jan–Jul | +57.2% YoY | Sharp rebound | Credit demand has returned |
Are Warsaw apartment prices going down now?
Only at the headline level. Warsaw apartment prices have dipped recently because cheaper new projects entered the market, rather than because developers suddenly cut prices everywhere.
RynekPierwotny puts the average asking price for a new Warsaw apartment at PLN 19,568 per m², down about 1% from the previous month. It was the second monthly decline in a row after the average had climbed for much of the preceding year.
The explanation is unusually clear. RynekPierwotny found that the newer apartments entering the Warsaw market recently averaged about PLN 16,400 per m², far below the existing citywide stock. Adding thousands of relatively affordable units mechanically pulled the average down.
The median gives a better idea of what a typical buyer is seeing. It currently sits at PLN 17,400 per m², up about 5% year on year, compared with a 10% rise in the arithmetic average. That five-percentage-point gap shows how much expensive projects are still pulling the headline figure upward.
So claims that Warsaw property prices are "falling" are premature. Some averages have started slipping, but broad repricing has yet to show up.
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The glass towers going up around the centre sell a view at a price the rent has not followed, with a service charge on top. Where asking prices sit furthest from what flats earn and resell for.
Is demand for Warsaw property actually strong right now?
Yes. Warsaw housing demand is currently strong enough to keep the market moving even at today's high prices.
The 3,840 developer sales recorded by CBRE in the second quarter were still above the city's five-year quarterly average. More importantly, sales over the previous four quarters were almost 4,500 units higher than during the comparable earlier period.
Credit demand confirms that households are coming back rather than developers simply moving inventory between projects. BIK's July mortgage-demand index was 22% higher year on year, and 11.6% more people applied for a housing loan. The average requested mortgage reached PLN 538,500, up 9.3%.
That is quite a different Warsaw market from the one in which high rates were freezing large numbers of mortgage-dependent households out of buying.
The catch is price sensitivity. Buyers are returning fastest where the total purchase price still works, which helps explain why relatively affordable projects can pull Warsaw's citywide average down even while overall demand improves.
Does Warsaw have too many apartments for sale?
No. Warsaw has plenty of new apartments to choose from, but the current stock still looks manageable relative to how quickly buyers are absorbing it.
CBRE counted 16,345 developer apartments available at the end of the second quarter, 7.1% more than three months earlier. Developers had added 4,753 units during the quarter, a jump of 66.8% from the unusually weak start to the year.
The useful comparison is sales. Warsaw buyers purchased 15,986 new homes over the previous 12 months while developers launched 15,395. Buyers therefore absorbed roughly 600 more apartments than developers added during that period.
Current listings also show that supply is spread across different completion dates. RynekPierwotny currently has about 1,500 completed Warsaw apartments available, around 2,300 due within a year and more than 8,000 whose delivery is over a year away.
That gives buyers considerably more choice without creating the two- or three-year inventory pile that would make us seriously worried about oversupply.
There is still a risk further out. If developers keep accelerating launches because mortgage demand looks strong, the balance can change. For now, sales and supply remain fairly close.
| Supply measure | Latest Warsaw reading | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Developer stock at end of Q2 | 16,345 homes | Plenty of choice |
| Q2 new launches | 4,753 | Supply picked up sharply |
| Q2 sales | 3,840 | Demand remains solid |
| 12-month launches | 15,395 | Roughly matched by absorption |
| 12-month sales | 15,986 | Buyers absorbed slightly more than developers launched |
| Ready-to-move-in listings currently visible | ~1,500 | Negotiation pressure exists, but no huge glut |
Everything a foreign buyer should know before buying in Warsaw
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Will cheaper mortgages send Warsaw prices surging again?
Cheaper mortgages should keep Warsaw property demand strong, although another sudden price explosion looks unlikely for now.
Housing credit has already responded dramatically to lower borrowing costs. BIK says banks granted PLN 74 billion of mortgages in the first half of 2026, up 59.7% from a year earlier. By the end of July, the increase in mortgage value for the year to date was still 57.2%.
Recent applications show that the rebound has not disappeared. In July, mortgage enquiries were 22% higher by value than a year earlier.
This puts more purchasing power back into the Warsaw market, especially for households that were previously just outside banks' affordability tests. Even a modest improvement in monthly repayments can move thousands of buyers into a higher apartment-price bracket.
But today's market has a natural brake: homes are already expensive. The average new Warsaw apartment costs nearly PLN 1.1 million, according to RynekPierwotny. Credit can revive transactions much faster than it can make a PLN 1 million apartment feel cheap.
Easier financing should support prices. On its own, it probably isn't enough to launch another double-digit boom.
Are Warsaw homes becoming affordable again?
A little. Warsaw housing affordability is improving around the edges because wages are rising while many apartment prices have slowed down.
The Warsaw Statistical Office currently puts the average gross enterprise-sector salary at PLN 11,392.64 a month. The city's unemployment rate is just 1.6%.
Compare that with the housing market. The median asking price for a new apartment is rising about 5% annually, while resale asking-price growth has recently been only a few percent. For buyers whose incomes are growing at a similar or faster pace, the gap is finally moving in the right direction.
Yet the actual ticket prices remain difficult. At today's PLN 17,400-per-m² new-build median, a 50 m² apartment comes to roughly PLN 870,000 before finishing, parking and financing. Using the citywide average of PLN 19,568 per m² pushes the same apartment close to PLN 980,000.
There are also almost no genuinely cheap new apartments left. Among roughly 12,000 current RynekPierwotny listings with disclosed price bands, only three are below PLN 400,000. More than 3,600 cost over PLN 1 million.
Warsaw is becoming less unaffordable rather than affordable.
| Affordability measure | Current level | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Average gross Warsaw salary | PLN 11,392.64/month | Income growth supports buyers |
| New-build median | PLN 17,400/m² | Better representation of typical pricing |
| Average new apartment price | PLN 1.094m | Entry cost remains high |
| Listings below PLN 400k | 3 | Budget new-build supply is almost nonexistent |
| Listings above PLN 1m | 3,617 | Seven-figure prices are now common |
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The glass towers going up around the centre sell a view at a price the rent has not followed, with a service charge on top. Where asking prices sit furthest from what flats earn and resell for.
Is Warsaw's resale market weaker than the new-build market?
Yes. Warsaw resale apartments currently look much flatter than developer price lists suggest.
Gratka's latest data put asking prices at roughly PLN 19,700 per m² for studios, PLN 17,500 for two-room homes and about PLN 16,100 for three-room apartments. Typical listings are sitting on the market for roughly 68–70 days.
Other recent portal data have shown annual resale asking-price growth around the low single digits. Transaction datasets have been softer still, with many apartment-size categories showing little nominal movement compared with a year earlier.
This is where the difference between Warsaw's headline average and the actual market becomes obvious. Developers can launch a handful of very expensive projects and move the citywide new-build average. A private seller of a 20-year-old two-bedroom apartment has to compete with other owners, renovation costs and increasingly attractive developer incentives.
The resale market should remain the easiest place for buyers to negotiate unless mortgage rates fall much further.
Are Warsaw rents rising fast enough to justify today's property prices?
No. Warsaw rents are still high, but they are currently growing too slowly to make today's apartment prices look cheap for investors.
Gratka's latest Warsaw rental data show a median asking rent of PLN 4,200 a month, or PLN 82 per m². Apartments take around 29 days on average to leave the market, so rental demand is clearly there.
The same dataset estimates a gross annual rental yield of 5.93%. That is respectable. Once we subtract vacancy, maintenance, furnishing, taxes, administration and occasional renovation, however, the owner's actual return falls noticeably below that headline number.
This becomes more important for leveraged buyers. A gross return around 6% leaves much less room for error when borrowing costs remain substantial.
Warsaw buy-to-let can still work well if the apartment is bought at the right price, especially in smaller units and districts with deep tenant demand. Buying almost anything and assuming rent growth will rescue the economics is much harder to justify these days.
| Warsaw rental measure | Current reading | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Median monthly rent | PLN 4,200 | Rent remains expensive |
| Median rent per m² | PLN 82 | Strong absolute level |
| Average listing time | 29 days | Tenant demand is healthy |
| Estimated gross yield | 5.93% | Decent before costs |
| Typical net return | Below gross yield | Price paid still matters a lot |
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Are investors likely to drive the next Warsaw property boom?
Probably not. Warsaw investors are still buying, but today's rental maths gives them fewer reasons to chase prices aggressively.
A gross yield near 5–6% can make sense for someone paying cash, especially if the property has renovation or appreciation potential. With leverage, the calculation is much tighter because financing costs can consume a large part of the rental return before maintenance and vacancy enter the picture.
That leaves owner-occupiers playing a bigger role than during periods when cheap money encouraged investment buying. Warsaw still has around 1.1 million people employed in the enterprise sector, unemployment is 1.6%, and mortgages are becoming easier to obtain. Those households can support a large purchase market without investors having to dominate it.
Institutional rental operators add another layer of demand, but Poland's professionally managed rental stock remains small compared with Warsaw's overall housing market.
If interest rates fall a lot further while rents remain around today's levels, investor demand could become much more aggressive again. We are not there yet.
Which Warsaw districts should rise fastest now?
Affordable, well-connected Warsaw districts have the best setup for stronger demand now because buyers can actually finance the homes being built there.
The current price spread across Warsaw is enormous. RynekPierwotny lists average new-build prices around PLN 35,200 per m² in Śródmieście and roughly PLN 27,400 in Wola. Białołęka is closer to PLN 14,000, while Targówek and Ursus sit around PLN 15,200–15,400.
That changes what lower mortgage rates can actually do. A small improvement in borrowing capacity may suddenly make an apartment in Ursus or Targówek possible for a household, while it barely changes the affordability of a central apartment priced above PLN 25,000 per m².
Supply is also heavily concentrated outside the center. Białołęka currently has about 2,640 developer listings, while Targówek has more than 1,200 and Ursus roughly 760. Those districts have enough stock to generate real transaction volume if demand strengthens.
Prime Warsaw can still hold its value exceptionally well because land is scarce and wealthy buyers are less dependent on mortgages. But if we are asking where lower rates can create the biggest change in actual buying activity, the PLN 14,000–18,000-per-m² part of Warsaw looks more interesting.
| District | Current new-build average | Current listings | What stands out |
|---|---|---|---|
| Śródmieście | ~PLN 35,154/m² | 245 | Tiny, very expensive market |
| Wola | ~PLN 27,386/m² | 1,422 | Large premium pipeline |
| Mokotów | ~PLN 19,218/m² | 1,389 | Deep upper-middle market |
| Białołęka | ~PLN 14,038/m² | 2,639 | Huge affordable supply |
| Targówek | ~PLN 15,193/m² | 1,221 | Accessible to more mortgage buyers |
| Ursus | ~PLN 15,401/m² | 759 | Similar affordability advantage |
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Are Warsaw developers finally starting to cut prices?
Sometimes, but the bigger change is that Warsaw developers are bringing cheaper apartments to market and becoming more willing to negotiate.
The latest citywide figures are a good example. Warsaw's average developer asking price has fallen for two months, yet RynekPierwotny says the main reason was the arrival of new apartments averaging roughly PLN 16,400 per m². Developers have found a way to improve affordability without marking down every older unit on their price lists.
Completed homes create more pressure. CBRE found that more than one fifth of Warsaw's developer stock was already finished at the end of the second quarter, the highest share in its historical data. A developer carrying a completed unit has much more reason to close the sale than one marketing an apartment that will not be handed over for another two years.
This is where buyers can often get the real discount. Parking spaces, storage rooms, finishing packages, payment terms and individual negotiation can lower the effective cost without changing the advertised price per square meter.
Warsaw buyers are active again, so developers have little reason to launch a citywide price war. But anyone paying the first advertised price on a finished apartment without asking what else is available is probably leaving money on the table.
Does Warsaw still have enough people who need housing?
Yes. Warsaw still has one of the strongest underlying demand pools in Poland, which makes a long property slump much harder to produce.
The city's officially registered population reached about 1.867 million at the end of 2025 and was still rising. The number of people actually using Warsaw housing is larger because temporary residents, some foreign workers and students are not all captured perfectly by official population counts.
Employment is the bigger reason we remain confident about demand. The Warsaw Statistical Office currently records around 1.108 million enterprise-sector jobs, average gross pay above PLN 11,000 a month and registered unemployment of just 1.6%.
Those figures do not guarantee rising property prices. They do mean that Warsaw has a very large group of working households capable of responding when mortgages become easier to obtain.
Poland's shrinking national population therefore tells only part of the housing story. Jobs, salaries, universities, corporate headquarters and government activity remain heavily concentrated in the capital. Warsaw can keep gaining housing demand even while the country's overall demographic picture deteriorates.
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What could actually make Warsaw property prices fall hard?
Warsaw property prices would need a real economic shock to fall hard from here; today's data are nowhere near that setup.
We would worry if mortgage demand suddenly reversed, Warsaw unemployment moved materially higher and unsold completed apartments kept building at the same time. That combination would force both private sellers and developers to compete much harder for a shrinking group of buyers.
Currently, the direction is almost the opposite. Mortgage lending is rising sharply, the unemployment rate is 1.6%, developer sales remain above their five-year quarterly norm and sales over the previous 12 months slightly exceeded new launches.
The softest part of the market would probably crack first. Older resale apartments with high renovation costs have fewer ways to defend their price, and investors with weak rental returns may become more willing to sell.
Inflation is another risk because it can keep borrowing costs higher for longer. Warsaw property is already expensive enough that even a modest deterioration in monthly affordability can remove a large group of potential buyers.
A correction is possible, especially in weaker individual properties. A broad Warsaw crash currently requires several things to go wrong that are still going right.
What could make Warsaw property prices take off again?
Another meaningful drop in mortgage costs could push Warsaw prices higher quite quickly if developers fail to add enough affordable homes.
We already know the first half of that equation works. Housing-loan values are running more than 50% above last year's levels, while mortgage applications remain firmly higher year on year. Buyers who had been pushed out by financing costs are gradually returning.
The second half is supply. Affordable Warsaw stock is far thinner than the headline inventory suggests. Only three new apartments in RynekPierwotny's current database cost below PLN 400,000, while more than 3,600 exceed PLN 1 million. The apartments most households can realistically finance can disappear much faster than total citywide inventory.
That is how another price acceleration could start. Lower rates bring more buyers back, the cheapest sensible projects sell first, and replacement supply arrives at higher land and construction costs.
We would become noticeably more bullish if sales begin beating new launches quarter after quarter while Warsaw's inventory of homes below roughly PLN 800,000 starts shrinking.
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What each district costs, how long a flat sits before it sells, and what it earns once let. Plus the things nobody writes down: the claim that can still sit on a pre-war address, and the lease you have to sign to ever get your flat back.
So where is the Warsaw property market heading?
Warsaw's property market is heading toward slower, uneven price growth, with more transactions and much tougher competition between individual apartments.
The current evidence does not support a Warsaw property crash. Demand has recovered too much, mortgage lending is growing too quickly and unemployment is far too low for that to be our base case.
We also would not bet on another immediate 15–20% price surge. The median new-build price is rising much more slowly than the headline average, resale prices are fairly flat, rents are not racing upward and buyers now have more than 17,000 new-build listings to compare.
Our central expectation is low-to-mid single-digit nominal price growth over the next year, with a much wider spread underneath. Good apartments in affordable, connected districts can do better. Overpriced resale homes and finished developer units with plenty of nearby competition can stay flat or require discounts. Prime central Warsaw can follow its own path because supply there is much harder to replace.
Warsaw is moving into a more normal housing cycle: credit is coming back, transactions are healthy and buyers have regained some bargaining power.
If cheaper mortgages keep pulling buyers back faster than developers can replace affordable stock, prices will accelerate again. If that balance reverses and completed inventory keeps piling up, the market will soften.
As of now, the first scenario looks slightly more likely.
OUR METHODOLOGY
To assess where Warsaw's property market is heading, we did not rely on a single price index. We separated the market into buyer demand, prices, new supply, mortgage conditions, affordability, rental economics and differences between Warsaw's main market segments.
We used sales and mortgage data primarily to judge demand, asking-price and listing data to understand current pricing and available stock, and Warsaw labour-market and income data to test whether households still have the economic base to support purchases. Where averages could be distorted by expensive projects or changes in the mix of homes entering the market, we compared them with medians and the composition of new supply.
For supply, the important comparison was not simply how many apartments were listed. We compared developer inventory, new launches, completed homes and the pace of sales to see whether stock was genuinely accumulating faster than buyers could absorb it.
We also kept the new-build, resale and rental markets separate where necessary. Developer asking prices can move because of the projects entering the market, while resale owners face different competitive pressures. Rental yields were considered alongside financing and normal ownership costs rather than treated as a net investor return.
The final outlook is an aggregation of those indicators rather than a mechanical forecast. Our base case reflects the current balance between recovering credit demand, still-high purchase prices, manageable new-build supply, slow rental growth and Warsaw's strong employment market. We would reassess it if mortgage demand weakened sharply, completed inventory began accumulating much faster, or affordable stock started disappearing significantly faster than developers could replace it.
Key sources used for this analysis include CBRE's Warsaw Q2 2026 developer-market data, BIK's July 2026 mortgage lending data, BIK's July mortgage-demand index, BIK's first-half 2026 credit-market review, RynekPierwotny's Warsaw new-build price and inventory data, Gratka's Warsaw resale and rental market data, the Warsaw Statistical Office's current city indicators, the Statistical Review of Warsaw for Q2 2026, and the National Bank of Poland's 9 September 2026 monetary-policy decision.
Everything a foreign buyer should know before buying in Warsaw
The pack also covers the claim that can still sit on a pre-war address, and the lease you have to sign to ever get your flat back.
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