Against the vacancies in Budapest: Conversion into a student shared apartment in a prime location

Anyone who knows the conditions on the German rental market may find it hard to believe, but: in Budapest, a good 10-15% of all apartments in the city center are EMPTY. These are not certain numbers, but they have been confirmed to me by various sources and correspond to my personal impressions.

On the other hand, there is a glaring one in Budapest Lack of housing for students, which, according to the city's assessment, will increase in the coming years will get even worse, because the necessary new construction projects are missing. This is exactly where our project comes in:

Conversion of empty dream apartment
in an exclusive student shared apartment in Budapest

The project I am presenting today is not a purchase, but simply a conversion of a beautiful but mostly empty apartment in a prime location into a student shared apartment that can be rented out all year round. We were able to convince the owners that they would be able to tap into a good source of income with student-oriented furniture and that we would find tenants for them who would value such an apartment and treat it well.

That's exactly what we've now completed and I think it was worth it 🙂

Why don't the owners want to rent?

There are many reasons for the high vacancy rate:

1) Among other things, the apartments have been in the family for decades, but the owners have lived in the country or even abroad for a long time. They only want to sell the hidden reserve in an emergency, and since the fixed costs (aka housing benefit) are so low, keeping an empty apartment rarely costs them more than 100 euros a month.

2) Whether rented or not, the value of your apartment has doubled in the last 10 years alone. The property is therefore only sold in return for the purchase of another property.

You first have to come up with the idea of ​​selling an apartment in Budapest in order to invest the money in Wirecard shares 😀

2) You have to invest in most apartments to make them rentable. Money that many of these owners don't have or don't want to spend. You don't think it might be worth it because:

3) The usual long-term rent is very low - in contrast to the rent for fixed-term contracts, which are mainly concluded with foreigners. Whether you rent for under 5 euros/sqm or get 10-15 euros makes a huge difference.

4) There are also many fears: how will the tenants treat the apartment, how secure is the receipt of money, how can I end the tenancy if the apartment is to be sold, and much more.

5) Last, not least: a lack of language skills is also an obstacle. The owners had no English at school and certainly had no desire to negotiate with foreign-speaking tenants.

How our model solves these problems

Our model solves all of these points because everything is connected:

– fixed-term contracts provide more control over the condition of the apartment. It can't happen that you only notice after 3 years what the tenants are doing.

– Since we rent a shared apartment, we send in bi-weekly Cleaning team into the common areas. We see this as a service, but also as investment protection. It's better than insurance because here we catch problems before they become serious.

- the higher rent is justified by its special location (in this case: pretty much directly on Margaret Island) and amenities. It attracts a group of tenants who are obviously more attentive. Since we also focus on medical students from Germany, we can only report good things so far, also with regard to payment reliability.

– We take over the administration and the Tenant contact.

Is a student shared apartment worth investing in?

If you are interested in a project like this and can imagine realizing something like this with us, please feel free to contact us meet us online or here on site.