Just a year ago, Łódź was a city with the second largest offer of new residential premises (of course after Warsaw) – this is confirmed by Big Data RynekPierwotny.pl x Flt. This situation would be difficult to imagine ten years earlier. Despite the clear awakening of the Łódź development market, the housing resource of Łódź is relatively old, because it is characterized by a small participation of newer premises and houses. Experts of the RynekPierwotny.pl portal analyze this interesting situation. It affects not only aspects directly related to the apartment market.
The list of the census, i.e. we have nothing better at the moment
Trying to show the specifics of the Łódź housing resource, we have no choice when it comes to a data source. Namely, you need to use the last universal census. The deadline for conducting this census during pandemic restrictions probably had an impact on the results of vacancies (e.g. due to the trips of students and remote staff). This is an important note in the context of the chart below, because it presents the number of premises and houses inhabited in 2021 in terms of the time of erecting a residential building. The compartments of the year of construction (not necessarily optimal) are the result of the GUS assumptions.
The difference between Łódź and Wrocław is huge
Even taking into account the above reservations, we can see the difference between cities about younger and older housing resources on the chart. Łódź must be included in the second group, which is certainly related to the difficult economic situation of the city in the 1990s and the first decade of the current century. An example would be statistics regarding unemployment from the first quarter of 2003. This indicator in the case of Łódź was as much as 19.4%. Similar results from other large cities were much smaller (Warsaw – 6.5%, Krakow – 8.9%, Wrocław – 12.9%, Poznań – 7.4%, Gdańsk – 13.2%).
Difficult economic transformation is one of the main reasons that caused that relatively few apartments were created in Łódź for most of the Third Polish Republic. The census from 2021 showed about 15,000 inhabited houses and premises erected in the years 2003 – 2011. This is a result similar to much less people's Lublin and almost three times smaller than in the case of Wrocław. The participation of houses and premises erected after 1989 in the entire inhabitant of the housing resource. This indicator according to the census data from 2021 was:
- Bydgoszcz – 31%
- Gdańsk – 43%
- Katowice – 19%
- Krakow – 47%
- Lublin – 43%
- Łódź – 21%
- Poznań – 39%
- Szczecin – 39%
- Wrocław – 48%
- Warsaw – 44%
The results from such cities as, for example, Warsaw, Kraków and Wrocław may seem very high. However, they are reflected in the summary of the universal lists. For example, in 1988, around 193,000 houses and premises in residential buildings (empty and inhabited) were written in Wrocław. The comparable result of the census from 2021 is over 363,000 residential premises and houses.
Old housing resource also in Katowice
In reference to the above information, we cannot ignore the situation of Katowice, which are also a city with an old housing resource. It is difficult not to associate this fact with a record difference in average transactional prices of 1 sq m. New and used apartments in the capital of the Śląskie Voivodeship – much larger than even in the case of Łódź. Katowice is an analyzed city with the most visible housing collapse of the 90s.
Energy consumption, i.e. an underestimated aspect
Experts of the RynekPierwotny.pl portal point out that the age of the housing resource is influenced not only on market aspects. Despite the lack of detailed data, it can be assumed that in cities with older housing resources, the high energy consumption of residential buildings is a greater problem. If the EU policy regarding the requirements for the housing resource is implemented in Poland, then the aforementioned energy -intensity problems will gain a greater translation into the prices of an older area.
