Budapest downtown properties are still popular among Chinese buyers

Chinese are the largest nationality among the non-EEA real estate buyers in Budapest. They prefer to buy property in the 13th, 7th and 10th districts.

However, according to the latest data, their rate fell a bit. In 2021, it was 36.3 percent, while in 2022, that decreased to 31.5 percent among non-EEA citizens. Meanwhile, the rate of Ukrainians grew by 2.5 percent and, interestingly, there were a lot of UK citizens buying property in Hungary (5 percent), haszon.hu wrote. Out of the 125,000 transactions, only 3,000 concerned non-EEA citizens.

Parbeszed-Greens: Government preferring ‘Chinese investors to Hungarians’

The government “prefers Chinese investors to the Hungarian people”, Richárd Barabás, spokesman for the opposition Párbeszéd-Greens party, told an online press conference on Saturday, in reference to planned battery plant projects in eastern Hungary. Barabás said it was “incomprehensible, how a battery plant, built as a Chinese investment, using foreign materials and employing very few Hungarians, in low positions and for meagre wages could contribute to Hungary’s development”.

The government’s argument that it is aimed at protecting Hungarian jobs is false, Barabás insisted, and mentioned a Samsung project at God, north of Budapest, in which “only half of the employees are Hungarian, including a negligible portion of locals”. Referring to the government’s proposal to introduce less stringent regulations for foreigners taking up employment in Hungary, Barabás said “the government has admitted that there is no labour supply to support the battery plant projects”. Barabás said his party would turn to the European Commission over the battery plant projects. He insisted that the plants would be constructed too close to residential areas and their water consumption would exceed EU-set limits.

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