Innovativeness on the Polish real estate market

Abstract

The article presents the formation and the development of the contemporary real estate market in Poland as a clear example of innovation on a macro level. After years of forced stagnation, the Polish real estate market has become an independent branch of the national economy. Over half a century, 1957–2012, the turnover on this market increased from 105,000 transactions a year to 644,000 in 2012. The Polish real estate market is developing simultaneously in all 16 voivodeships, with the share from 3% to 14%. What prevails in the turnover, partly due to the lack of domestic capital, are transactions related to residential properties, in the years 1990‒2012 constituting from 36% to 77% of the share. The formation of the domestic real estate market has entailed the creation of a modern network of entities related to this market—notaries (about 2,300), agents, appraisers, facility managers (about 50 thousand licensed entities in total). The innovation process is also observed in the area of land and mortgage registers whose over twenty-million resource, with the assistance of the European Union, has been IT-enabled. In the area of construction, a new form has arisen, the property developer one, which every year makes about one-fourth of the new housing resources available. Novelties also include the institution of lease which in the form of the private market, as well as the public one (Social Housing Associations) more and more broadly helps the Poles with the housing issue. Another innovation is so called reverse mortgage which consists in replacing the housing resource into the owners’ pension.