Listed developers sold about 7,000 flats in Q3, but buyers still hold the upper hand

Rental listings jump as holiday flats return

Otodom recorded 21.7 thousand new rental offers in September 2026, which works out to roughly one new listing every two minutes. By the end of the month, tenants could choose from 27.3 thousand flats across Poland. Growth was fastest in Kielce (+28% m/m), Lublin (+19% m/m), and Kraków and Wrocław (each +15% m/m). Part of the extra supply comes from flats returning from short-term letting after the summer season, most visibly in tourist areas, where listings in the Tricity rose 24.8% m/m and in Sopot 41%. New rules on short-term rentals will ban such letting only from 2028, which may encourage some owners to move to long-term tenants now. Paweł Jarząbek, Otodom's market research and analysis manager, said the picture is changing.

If the number of flats available for rent stays at its current level, tenants may have more room to negotiate in the fourth quarter than in 2025.

Rents fall in Kraków while sale prices rise

Average asking rents in Kraków dropped 5.2% year on year, yet they still exceed 3.1 thousand zloty a month. The city also saw one of the sharpest jumps in new rental listings in September, at 15% m/m. Asking prices for new flats in Kraków are 3.2% higher than a year ago. The secondary market is still rising, but growth has slowed to 0.4% after several quarters of gains. Rents and purchase prices in the same city are therefore moving in opposite directions.

Developers sell more, led by the largest firms

Parkiet's analysis of 18 listed developers estimates they sold about 7,000 flats in the third quarter of 2026, over 18% more than a year earlier and 9.5% more than in the second quarter. Over nine months the group sold 19,600 units, also up more than 18%. The first quarter of 2026 was the first decline after five growth periods, and the second and third quarters more than made up for it. The top three firms accounted for 45% of sales in the first three quarters, and the top six for 76%. Dom Development posted a ninth consecutive quarter above 1,000 units and its best quarter in company history, while Develia expects its best year ever. Archicom sold 679 units in the third quarter against 800 it had announced, which it blamed on later project launches.

Buyers keep the upper hand

RynekPierwotny.pl counted almost 80,000 flats for sale at the end of September across the seven largest markets, including 17.7 thousand in Warsaw and 12.1 thousand in Kraków. Ready-to-occupy flats made up about 29% of the offer, more than twice their share a few years ago. Sales in those markets reached nearly 15,000 in the third quarter, up 16% on the second quarter and about 21% above the 2025 quarterly average, with growth in every city. Jan Dziekoński, the portal's chief economist, credited lower loan costs over the summer and fear of rising rates, which arrived in September, along with developers' marketing. He said the market has not changed hands.

It is still a buyers' market. The record offer, the large number of ready flats and easy access to price information mean buyers are calling the shots.

Smaller developers fall behind

Smaller developers, especially regional ones, are losing ground, according to pb.pl, and in Katowice and Łódź the current offer would take two years to sell out. Marek Wielgo, an expert at RynekPierwotny.pl, said smaller firms increasingly lose buyers when they are compared online. He added that the requirement to publish flat prices mainly helped the largest players. Mid-2024 data from the portal showed about 66% of developers selling flats more slowly than they were building them. Pb.pl argues that continued consolidation could push flat prices up, while the largest developers with big nationwide offers and marketing budgets fare best.