Property prices in Budapest have risen by 26% – and this is all thanks to Home Start.
According to the MNB's report,
Nationwide, house prices rose by 5.0% in 2025 Q3, while on an annual basis, they increased by 21.3%.
According to the MNB's November forecast, annual price dynamics could accelerate to 28.8% by the end of 2025, which would represent the sharpest rise in housing prices in a millennium. This would be the highest level since the second quarter of 2022.
The annual price increase has not been this large since the second quarter of 2022, and according to the central bank's November forecast, it could have accelerated to 28.8% by the end of 2025, which would be the sharpest rise in housing prices in a millenium.
Az MNB Lakásárindex alapján
house prices rose 3.2% in July-September compared to Q2, taking the year-on-year growth to 26.2%,
which corresponds to an over nine-year high.
However, the MNB noted that "the level of processing of housing market transaction data is lower than usual in Budapest and the Pest region. The data only contain a small proportion of September observations."
Just like in Budapest, house prices rose 3.2% in Q3 in rural cities, as well, taking the annual growth up to 19.1% from 17.4%.
The largest quarterly price increase was observed in villages, at 8.9%,
although it accelerated from a lower rate of growth. The annual growth rate thus rose from 11.6% to 18.6%.
In Q3, house prices continued to rise in most regions compared to the second quarter.
The largest quarterly price increase was observed in the cities of Northern Hungary (+10.5%),
while in the cities of the Southern Great Plain, in the third quarter, a 1.1% price correction followed the significant price increase in the previous quarter. House prices in cities rose by 5.6% in Central Transdanubia, 3.4% in Southern Transdanubia and 3.0% in the Northern Great Plain in the third quarter, while in the cities of Pest County, the price increase was relatively more moderate at 1.5%.
On an annual basis, house prices rose by more than 20% in most regions, with only Pest County seeing singledigit growth (+8.7%) in urban house prices, while the largest annual price increase (+23.3%) was observed in the cities of Central Transdanubia.
Based on the aggregate MNB house price index, which shows the national average of house price developments, house prices rose by 5.0% on a quarterly basis in 2025 Q3, following a 3.8% increase in the previous quarter. The annual nominal growth rate accelerated from 17.3% in the previous quarter to 21.3%, while
in real terms, house prices rose by 16.3% on an annual basis on a national average.
Interestingly, despite the introduction of Home Start,
the dynamics of housing prices over a three-month period were lower nationwide than in the first quarter,
when government bond payments caused housing prices to rise by 8.0% nationwide and 10.8% in Budapest over the same period. Presumably, the purchase price limits of HUF 1.5 million per square metre, HUF 100 million for condominiums and HUF 150 million for single-family homes, which are built into the programme, also play a moderate role within the range around these limits. As can be seen in the figure above, housing prices have doubled since the end of 2020.
Cover image (for illustration purposes only): Getty Images
