Property in Budapest
Hi Piggy,
A friend of mine just bought an apartment in budapest. He went with the casaro estate agent and was very impressed with them. They have avery interesting website
www.casaro-hungary.com which gives a good idea of the types of property and their costs.
The casaro service was excellent though expensive (4% of cost of property + vat @25% = 5%). He spent 4 days in Budapest Sat. to Tuesday, saw c. 12 apartments and completed all of the paperwork to buy an apartment on tuesday. All the casaro contacts and solicitors spoke excellent english and all contracts were in hungarian and english including for the setting up of a company, opening a bank account and signing contracts etc.
Budapest is a beautiful city and certainly worth visiting if even just for a visit. The best districts apparently are 5, 6 and 7, then 8,9, 13 and 14 all in pest (south of the danube, buda is on the other side of the river).
Points of note: it will cost you about 20% to actually buy an apartment as follows: 6% stamp duty, c.6% to furnish an apartment, 5% to casaro (if you use them), 1.5% to a solicitor and circa 1.5% to set up a company, fly over there etc.
There are also significant costs attached to renting out the apartment: management fee c.10% (12% with casaro), tenant finding fee 1 months rent, accountant fee for company c. 450 Euro/year, tax to be paid in hungary on rental income.
Some good points - property is very inexpensive in budapest compared to almost any other european capital city, they will join the EU in May next year, they just devalued the Hungarian forint by circa 15%, Property in budapest increased in value by 40% over the last 3 years, it is forecast to increase by 25% this year (estate agents forecast and may be wildly optimistic but..) + many other subjective good points e.g. fantastic metro system + trams+buses (travel is easy and cheap), beautiful old buildings, lovely city, beautiful weather at least in summer and a lovely friendly people, also cheap to eat out and have beers etc.
All in all he is optimistic about the venture and was very satisfied with casaro. Though expensive, they offer a very good service to someone who doesnt know the language, the local set up, have contacts, legal work etc. etc.
In my opinion, budapest has been known about for quite a while, but people have not yet started to invest over there in any great numbers yet. There has been a lot of ads both in the papers and on radio recently and this may generate bigger interest.
Hope this has been of some help.
DM