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Budapest’s young people are joining the ranks of generation rent | Csaba Jelinek

Sell-offs of public housing and the right’s promotion of home ownership has left too many unable to afford accommodation

  • Csaba Jelinek is an urban sociologist based in Budapest

When I left my family home to study at university in 2007 and moved to downtown Budapest, housing costs were hardly a topic of conversation among my friends. I rented rooms in centrally located flats for £80-£100 per month. Fast forward to 2025 and a similar room in a shared flat would set you back at least £200 – double the price of 15 years ago. Talk to anyone in their 20s in Budapest today, and the deepening housing crisis will inevitably come up as one of the defining struggles of their lives.

The statistics paint an equally grim picture. Between 2010 and 2024, Hungary saw the largest increase of the housing price index among EU member states. While the EU average rose by 55.4%, Hungary’s housing price index rocketed by 234%. Meanwhile, per capita net income only grew by 86% in the 2010s. Budapest, the capital, is the centre of this crisis. According to the Hungarian National Bank, residential property prices are overvalued by 5-19%. This is partly explained with the high proportion of investment-driven purchases: these accounted for 30-50% of all transactions in the last five years in Hungary. Unlike in many other EU capitals, property investors in Budapest are not primarily foreign nationals – who accounted for just 7.3% of transactions between 2016 and 2022 – nor are they institutional players. Instead, they are typically individual Hungarian citizens. As real estate has become an increasingly appealing investment for upper- and middle-class households amid growing economic uncertainty, the result has been a deepening polarisation within Hungarian society.

Csaba Jelinek is an urban sociologist based in Budapest, focusing on housing and urban development. He is co-founder of Periféria Policy and Research Center and board member of the Alliance for Collaborative Real Estate Development

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© Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images/EPA/Alamy

© Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images/EPA/Alamy

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