Hungarian housing market breaks 5-year record, with everyone preparing for Home Start

After a quieter summer, the Otthon Start (Home Start) Programme (launched on 1 September with a preferential 3% interest rate for first-time homebuyers)

caused the domestic real estate market to pick up significantly in August.

Duna House pointed this out in its announcement, based on its own data. There were 11,369 sales nationwide, representing a 21.9% increase in transactions compared to the same period last year. Even compared to the previous month, the data shows a significant 19.8% increase.

This is the highest figure for august since 2020.

In the real estate market, it was noticeable that buyers who were not eligible for the Home Start Programme brought forward their purchase decisions, resulting in a significant increase in demand in August.

The graph below also shows that, in the last five years, the August tally has not been as high as this year.

There were 84,251 transactions in the first eight months of the year, 2.1% more than in the same period of 2024 and the eighth highest figure since 2011.

In August, Credipass — the group's international financial brand — estimated a loan volume of HUF 120 billion based on domestic data. This represents a 11.1% decrease compared to the previous month's estimate and a 9.7% increase compared to the central bank's (MNB) data for the same period last year.

The monthly decline is primarily due to some transactions being postponed so customers could take out loans under the Home Start Programme, which temporarily reduced the number of loans taken out in August.

So, it seems that there was contradictory movement in the real estate and credit markets, but in fact, both trends were driven by the same factor: the launch of the Home Start Programme. The slowdown can definitely be considered temporary, as industry consensus suggests that the programme's launch could lead to record credit volumes.