Budapest New-Build Prices Now Top Warsaw and Bucharest
Budapest new-build asking prices reached HUF 1.9 million per square metre in Q1 2026 - above Warsaw and roughly half as much again as Bucharest.
New-build apartments in Budapest passed HUF 1.9m per square metre in the first quarter of 2026, 8% higher than in March 2025. That figure now places the Hungarian capital above every comparable capital in its region. Bucharest did not reach HUF 1.3 million on a gross basis, Warsaw came close to HUF 1.7 million for shell-condition units, and Poznan stayed below HUF 1.2 million, according to a regional comparison by the developer Cordia published by Portfolio on 24 August 2026.
Construction is cheaper east and north; land is not
Cordia's sales director Aron Gorog attributes most of the gap to build costs. Projects in Poland and Romania cost roughly a quarter to a third less to construct than their Budapest equivalents. Land runs the other way. Warsaw plot prices are more than double those in Budapest or Bucharest, which explains why the Polish capital still prices near Hungarian levels despite the cheaper build.
The tax layer inside the headline number
Quoted prices are not directly comparable, because value-added tax on new homes differs across the three countries. Hungary applies 5%. Poland charges 8% on units under 150 square metres and 23% above that threshold. Romania moved to 21% in August 2026. A Romanian gross price that looks a third below Budapest therefore carries a materially heavier tax component inside it, and a Polish apartment above 150 square metres is taxed at more than four times the Hungarian rate. Anyone comparing per-square-metre figures across the region without checking which side of those thresholds a unit falls on is comparing different things.
What the income side looks like
Cordia puts gross rental yields at 4.5-6% in Poland and 5-6% in Bucharest. Glopra's Market Data v3 snapshot for 24 August 2026 puts Budapest's gross rental yield at 4.63%, on an average of USD 4,376 per square metre and annual price growth of 8.3% in forint terms, or 19.1% once the currency movement is counted. Budapest's Bubble Risk score of 64 sits in the elevated band.
A disclosure belongs with the analysis. Cordia is a Hungarian residential developer that sells in both Poland and Romania, so the comparison comes from a party with a commercial interest in cross-border purchases. The price levels can be checked against local indices; the yield ranges are the developer's own estimates and have not been independently verified here.
What the gap does and does not settle
On the quoted per-square-metre prices, the regional discount to Budapest runs at roughly a third. Sitting against that discount are currency exposure, an unfamiliar tax regime, letting and management costs in a foreign jurisdiction, and the fact that Warsaw's land pricing is already converging upward. None of those appear in a headline square-metre figure, and none of them are captured by the yield range either.
What the data does establish is narrower and still useful: Hungary's subsidised-purchase environment has pushed Budapest new-build pricing above regional peers whose economies build more cheaply, and the divergence widened by 8% in a single year.
Sources: Portfolio.hu (Cordia regional comparison), 24 Aug 2026 https://www.portfolio.hu/ingatlan/20260824/sokkal-olcsobban-vehetunk-uj-lakast-a-regio-fovarosaiban-mint-nalunk-mi-ennek-az-oka-857880