On a national scale, developers are definitely building the most new houses and apartments. However, their dominance is not obvious everywhere and not in every respect.
At first glance, developers' construction advantage seems unquestionable. In 2025, they started building approximately 130,000 residential premises and houses. The corresponding result of individual investors did not exceed 79,000, and other investors constituted a marginal part of the total result at the level of approximately 212,400 apartments and houses. However, RynekPierwotny.pl experts point out that after analyzing information less frequently presented by the media, developers' advantage over individual investors is not so obvious. In many parts of the country, the Kowalski family dominates as housing investors, which is confirmed by an interesting map. Additionally, it is individual investors who build larger areas and larger volumes of residential buildings.
Smiths and developers – two large construction forces
The presentation of construction information from the Central Statistical Office is often limited only to nationwide results. Meanwhile, the “Central Statistical Office” statistics on the scale of counties turn out to be much more interesting. The map below may be confirmation. It shows a comparison of the number of residential premises and houses launched by individual (private) investors and developers throughout 2025.
Due to the required readability of the map, or rather the cartodiagram, the still minor effects of the housing activities of other investors (i.e. communes, cooperatives, TBSs, SIMs and workplaces) have been omitted. We are talking about the total result of all these entities not exceeding 2% of the total number of houses and residential premises started in 2025.
The capital and the surrounding area with a clear advantage of developers
In the cartodiagram we see two phenomena at the same time. The first is the specific agglomeration of housing construction, which has already been pointed out many times by experts from the RynekPierwotny.pl portal. The concentration of most of the total expenditure and results of housing construction in several agglomerations is a phenomenon that has been visible for years and will probably continue to grow.
The second conclusion resulting from the map analysis indicates that the nationwide advantage of developers in terms of the number of houses and apartments launched is primarily the result of dynamic activity in several agglomerations (especially the centers of these agglomerations). The prime example is, of course, the Warsaw agglomeration, because developers definitely predominate in Warsaw itself and near the capital.
However, in other agglomerations the situation is quite different
Last year's data from the Central Statistical Office show us that developers have an advantage in terms of the number of houses and premises under construction, which is also visible in Poznań and Wrocław and in the vicinity of these cities. The suburban situation no longer seems so obvious in the context of developer advantage, if we check the information from the Tricity and Krakow.
In Gdańsk, Gdynia and Kraków, the primacy of developers is clear, but in these cities it is not. However, in the vicinity of Łódź, last year's data show the predominance of individual investors, although the scale of housing construction there is not very impressive. Individual investors are building more, for example in Małopolska, where private single-family construction has been recording high results for years.
In district Poland the situation is completely different
Additionally, we see a whole lot of counties on the map where the small size of the county indicates a small number of homes and units started. In the above-mentioned poviats, last year's result is mostly or even entirely the result of the activities of private investors, because developers build little or… nothing there. Throughout last year, developers did not start any new premises in 59 counties.
The Kowalskis are building a larger area and larger volume
Experts from the RynekPierwotny.pl website also emphasize that all the above observations refer to the total number of apartments and houses started. However, other measures of construction activity can be adopted, although in their case it will be necessary to rely on Central Statistical Office data on completed houses and residential premises. Namely, in terms of completed square footage and volume of residential buildings put into use, last year's results were as follows:
- total usable area of completed houses and residential premises: individual investors – 9.41 million sq m, developers – 8.35 million sq m.
- total volume of completed residential buildings: individual investors – 46.97 million m3developers – 43.64 million m3
This comparison confirms that last year individual investors were ahead of developers both in terms of the completed total usable area of new houses/premises and the total volume of new residential buildings. Importantly, such a relationship, rarely described in the media, is a long-term norm, not last year's exception. The above data confirm that the perception of the importance of individual investors may depend somewhat on the adopted measure of their activity.
