The price of older real estate (as opposed to newly-built homes and flats) is in free-fall, accoprding to real estate experts.
Katarína Uhríková of Reality Market said in late September that the price of a three-room flat in Banská Bystrica had fallen by 200,000 Slovak crowns ($4,700) over the past six months, a trend repeated in Bratislava and Petržalka, where three-room flats have fallen below one million crowns - unimaginable in January 1999.
In Žilina, the same sized flat is now available for around 680,000 crowns, while in Žiar nad Hronom, three-room flats have fallen from 555,000 to 350,000 this year.
Experts predict that the fall in market prices will not continue, because few new flats are being built, and the country still lacks 300,000 flats to satisfy demand for housing. Although the purchasing power of Slovaks remained low, the analysts said, demand for housing would soon push prices up again.
