More non-EU citizens investing in Hungarian property – latest real estate figures
Broker Duna House said on Tuesday that the number of property buyers in Hungary from outside the European Union has recovered to pre-pandemic levels. This is how foreigners buy real estate in Hungary:
Non-EU nationals applied for clearance for 3,647 property transactions and 3,485 of those were approved, indicating activity unmatched since before the pandemic, Duna House said, citing data on the government website.
Duna House deputy CEO Ferenc Máté said the number of applications climbed 23 per cent from a year earlier, while transaction volume accounted for 2.8 per cent of total real estate sales. The data show 84pc of those transactions involved home purchases and 76pc were in the capital.
The largest group of non-EU real estate buyers in Hungary were the Chinese, who bought 1,106 properties, up 71 per cent from 2023. Vietnamese nationals accounted for 16 per cent of property purchases by non-EU nationals.
According to the statistics, 84% of the property transactions that required a licence were residential, and 76% of the homes purchased were in the capital in 2024. Within Budapest, the seventh district had the highest number of transactions, accounting for 15 percent of sales, followed by Terézváros, Yozsefváros and the 13th district with 12-12 percent.
Outside the capital, Pest county was the most popular destination for foreign buyers (5%), but Győr-Moson-Sopron county was also a popular destination (3%). In the list of rural cities, Sopron, Mosonmagyaróvár, Pécs and Szeged were also popular, along with Debrecen.
According to a previous analysis, Germans also buy a lot of property in Hungary, but the value of the property they buy is only HUF 27.8 million, while the average price paid by Chinese buyers is HUF 76 million.
The location of the properties purchased can explain the big difference: the Chinese are almost only interested in properties in the inner districts of the capital, while the Germans are mainly active in South-West Hungary; their favourite locations are border settlements in the region, such as Bolhó, Bélavár and Babócsa in Somogy County, or Zalaszentbalázs and Zalakomár in Zala County, where they can buy property for a fraction of the value in the capital.
It is important to note that in Hungary, in addition to EU and EEA member states, Swiss citizens can also buy property without a permit.
Read here for more news about real estate in Hungary
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