Prague property is written about constantly, and almost every article contains a number that falls apart when you check it. We went to the primary sources — the statistical office, the cadastre, the central bank, consultancy reports — and assembled the whole decade. Along the way we worked out why the average price per square metre in Prague differs by 40 percent between publications that all cite official data.
The figure circulating in Czech and expat media is 182,000 to 187,000 crowns per square metre. It is real. It just does not describe what people usually think it describes.
182,700 Kč/m² is the average asking price of available flats in new-build developments currently on offer. Q2 2026, Deloitte Develop Index, 6,842 flats across 296 projects.
131,520 Kč/m² is the average price of an actual completed transaction across all Prague flats: new-builds, resale, panel blocks, brick, centre and outskirts together. Cadastre data for 2025, processed by the Czech Statistical Office.
The gap is 39 percent. It is not the gap between what sellers ask and what they get. Within the new-build segment that gap is tiny: in Q2 2026 developers asked 187,781 Kč/m² and sold at 182,845 — a difference of 2.7 percent (joint analysis by Central Group, Skanska Residential and Trigema). The 39 percent gap is the difference between new-builds and the market as a whole.
The average flat sold in Prague is 60 m². The average 2025 transaction came to roughly 7.9 million Kč.
And the awkward part straight away: no average transaction price in crowns exists for 2026 anywhere. The statistical office annual release stops at 2025 and the next one lands around mid-2027. Everything covering 2026 in crowns is new-build asking prices. Everything covering the actual market in 2026 is indices.
There is no continuous series of average price per square metre in Prague from 2016 to 2026. That is not researcher laziness — it is how Czech statistics are built.
Up to and including 2019, prices were derived from tax returns for the property acquisition tax. The tax was abolished on 26 September 2020 with retroactive effect, the data source vanished, and the publication was discontinued. From 2019 onward the figures come from the cadastre. The statistical office states plainly that the two periods are not comparable and absolute prices must not be stitched together.
So the full ten-year path is visible only through indices.
Index of realised prices for resale flats in Prague (actual transactions, base: 2010 average = 100):
| Period | Index | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 2016 | 108.9 | starting point |
| Q4 2022 | 226.9 | peak before correction |
| Q2 2023 | 212.5 | trough |
| Q2 2024 | 230.8 | peak surpassed |
| Q1 2026 | 286.0 | latest data |
Result: a 2.63-fold rise, or +162.6 percent over ten years. The parallel new-build series — which the statistical office maintains for Prague only, because other cities lack sufficient first-sale data — went from 103.6 to 268.2, or +158.9 percent.
A series in crowns exists only from 2019, based on the cadastre:
| Year | Kč/m², Prague | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 76,391 | — |
| 2020 | 85,784 | +12.3% |
| 2021 | 100,727 | +17.4% |
| 2022 | 112,676 | +11.9% |
| 2023 | 103,693 | −8.0% |
| 2024 | 115,889 | +11.8% |
| 2025 | 131,520 | +13.5% |
The only continuous crown-denominated series covering 2016 to 2024 is the Deloitte Real Index — also cadastre transactions, but sampled quarterly and skewed toward developer projects: 62,200 Kč/m² in Q4 2016 rising to 139,900 in Q4 2024, or +124.9 percent. The series then stops: there are no releases for 2025 or 2026.
One more thing these numbers do not contain. The statistical office publishes two transaction series for Prague, and they disagree. Rebased to 2015 = 100, for 2025 the cadastre index gives 285.2 while the realtor resale index gives 254.5. A gap of about 12 percent: different coverage, different sample cleaning, different weights. This is normal, and worth knowing — there is no single correct figure on this market.
This is where the story turns.
Cumulative consumer inflation in Czechia over 2016 to 2025 is ×1.541, or +54.1 percent. Almost all of it arrived in two years: 15.1 percent in 2022 and 10.7 percent in 2023.
| Indicator, 2016 → 2025 | Nominal | Real |
|---|---|---|
| Flat prices, cadastre index | +147.4% | +60.5% |
| Flat prices, realtor resale index | +133.1% | +51.3% |
| Prague wages | +78.3% | +15.6% |
| Rent actually paid (nationwide) | +46.5% | −5.0% |
The two-and-a-half-fold rise is nominal. Adjusted for inflation, roughly a one-and-a-half-fold rise remains. That is still a lot — but it is a very different story from the one usually told.
2016 to 2019: a steady run-up. Prices added 9 to 14 percent a year. Over those years Czechia held last place in Europe for housing affordability four years running.
2020 to 2021: covid. Contrary to expectations the market did not sag — it accelerated. 2021 delivered +17.4 percent on the cadastre index. Mortgage rates were at historic lows.
2022: the peak. Resale flats topped out in Q4 (index 226.9), new-builds already in Q2 (236.9).
2022 to 2023: the only correction of the decade. Resale lost 6.3 percent from peak to trough (226.9 down to 212.5 by Q2 2023). New-builds fell further — 9.3 percent (236.9 in Q2 2022 down to 214.9 in Q1 2024). In crowns, 2023 came in at −8.0 percent, the only negative in the series.
2024 to 2026: a new run-up, at different speeds by segment. Resale passed its pre-correction peak as early as Q2 2024; new-builds needed until Q1 2025. By Q1 2026 annual growth stood at +11.5 percent for resale and +11.1 percent for new-builds.
A fresh signal: from April 2026 the Czech National Bank tightened the rules for investment mortgages, and the regulator subsequently recorded a noticeable drop in the number of Prague transactions.
This needs two separate tables rather than one, because the leaderboards for transactions and for listings do not match.
By actual transactions, Q4 2016 → Q4 2024 (Deloitte Real Index; period deflator ×1.5036):
| District | 2016, Kč/m² | 2024, Kč/m² | Nominal | Real |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prague 1 | 114,500 | 194,400 | +69.8% | +12.9% |
| Prague 2 | 87,600 | 177,000 | +102.1% | +34.4% |
| Prague 3 | 62,800 | 155,500 | +147.6% | +64.7% |
| Prague 4 | 56,000 | 129,500 | +131.3% | +53.8% |
| Prague 5 | 67,400 | 148,300 | +120.0% | +46.3% |
| Prague 6 | 66,600 | 164,500 | +147.0% | +64.3% |
| Prague 7 | 72,300 | 144,300 | +99.6% | +32.8% |
| Prague 8 | 61,900 | 134,400 | +117.1% | +44.4% |
| Prague 9 | 54,600 | 122,200 | +123.8% | +48.9% |
| Prague 10 | 58,200 | 127,800 | +119.6% | +46.1% |
| Prague | 62,200 | 139,900 | +124.9% | +49.6% |
The transaction leaders are Prague 3 and Prague 6. Dejvice, which sits in Prague 6, is by no stretch a former working-class district. Prague 1, meanwhile, barely moved in real terms: +12.9 percent over eight years.
By new-build asking prices, end-2016 → Q2 2026 (Deloitte Develop Index; these are asking prices, not transactions):
| District | 2016, Kč/m² | 2026, Kč/m² | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prague 2 | 124,100 | 281,100 | +126.5% |
| Prague 3 | 96,500 | 226,100 | +134.3% |
| Prague 4 | 81,000 | 208,400 | +157.3% |
| Prague 5 | 88,300 | 203,800 | +130.8% |
| Prague 6 | 103,400 | 232,700 | +125.0% |
| Prague 7 | 85,200 | 233,000 | +173.5% |
| Prague 8 | 82,400 | 196,400 | +138.3% |
| Prague 9 | 64,200 | 163,100 | +154.0% |
| Prague 10 | 75,500 | 185,500 | +145.7% |
| Prague | 85,300 | 182,700 | +114.2% |
Here the leader is different — Prague 7. Ten years ago Holešovice was an industrial zone with a tram line; today it has the Vltava Riverfront quarter and a metro line on the drawing board. Prague 9 and Prague 4 follow: districts where developers could physically build, because vacant plots were still available.
Prague 1 does not appear in the Q2 2026 report at all: too few listings for a representative sample. For the same reason its +21.3 percent jump in Q1 2026 is a small-sample artefact, not a market move.
The gap between the most and least expensive district narrowed: in 2016 a square metre in Prague 1 cost 2.10 times more than in Prague 9, by 2024 only 1.59 times. In crowns, though, the gap widened: from 59,900 Kč per metre to 72,200. Percentages converge, money diverges.
One more detail: the average new flat on offer measures 64.8 m². In Q2 2026 the market held 6,842 flats across 296 projects.
The price per metre on its own says nothing. What matters is the ratio of price to income.
The average Prague wage in 2025 was 62,723 Kč a month, the median 52,793 Kč (statistical office structural series; the median always sits lower because high earners pull the mean up). Over the decade wages rose 78.3 percent nominally and 15.6 percent in real terms.
Set that against housing: real price growth on the cadastre index is +60.5 percent, real wage growth +15.6 percent. Nearly a fourfold gap. That is the entire story of the decade compressed into two numbers.
In years of work: a 70 m² flat in 2025 costs 12.2 average annual salaries or 14.5 median ones. On the single pan-European series the measure rose from 10.3 (end-2016) to 14.3 (end-2024). By that indicator Prague is the third least affordable city in Europe (15.0) after Amsterdam (15.4) and Athens (15.3).
Rent rose more slowly than purchase prices. The Deloitte Rent Index for Prague: 283 Kč per m² per month in Q1 2021, 466 Kč in Q1 2026. That is +64.7 percent over five years. Across Czechia as a whole, rent actually paid rose 46.5 percent over the decade against 54.3 percent inflation — meaning the real cost of renting fell.
Which yields a conclusion that surprises many: renting in Prague got cheaper relative to everything else, while buying got far more expensive. The gap between buying and renting widened over ten years rather than closing.
1. Less was built than at the start of the decade. Prague completed 6,092 flats in 2016 and 5,325 in 2025. The decade ceiling was 6,575. Multi-unit housing went from 5,306 completions to 3,409. City estimates put Prague needs at 8,000 to 10,000 flats a year to keep pace with population growth. That bar was not cleared in a single year of the decade.
2. Building permits halved. Permits issued: 5,147 in 2016 against 2,589 in 2025 — down 49.7 percent. Meanwhile the value of permitted construction rose from 10,515 to 32,882 million Kč. Fewer projects, each more expensive. That is not only inflation: the mix shifted — less standard housing, more premium.
3. Demand came back at record strength. 2025 was a record year for new-build sales at roughly 7,800 flats. About 28 percent went to investors, and 31 percent sold before construction was finished. A third of the market is gone before the building exists.
4. Short-term rentals ate the centre. Across Prague, 7,878 entire flats are given over to Airbnb and similar platforms — 1.1 percent of the city housing stock. That looks negligible until you look at Prague 1, where it is 22.2 percent. One flat in five in the historic centre is not housing in the ordinary sense.
5. Flats rose faster than houses. Between 2015 and 2024 Czech houses gained 96 percent, flats 154 percent. The shortage is specifically in urban multi-unit housing, not housing in general.
The Czech National Bank considers Czech housing overvalued. As of Q4 2025 the valuation-based overvaluation is 33.17 percent, and the gap against the safely attainable price — what a household can afford without undue risk — is 60.19 percent.
The bank does not, however, expect a crash. In December 2025 it put the probability of prices falling more than 10 percent within two years at 5 percent, against 29 percent in June 2022. Its forecast: +7.9 percent in 2026 and +6.0 percent in 2027.
Rental yields have compressed in the meantime. The central bank model yield is 2.77 percent, against 4.08 percent at the end of 2015. Gross yield in Prague currently runs at about 4.2 percent. Buying a flat to let is no longer obvious arithmetic: it rests on expected further price growth rather than on the rental income itself.
Several practical things follow from all of the above.
Do not compare a listing price with a transaction price. These are two different numbers from two different sources. The listing shows what the seller wants. The cadastre shows what happened. The distance between them can be 30 to 40 percent.
District growth percentages will not tell you where the bargain is. Prague 3 and Prague 6 grew the most — but that has already happened. Prague 1 grew least in real terms, and that does not make it cheap.
Compare the monthly payment, not the price. Over the decade mortgage rates travelled from roughly 2 percent to 6 percent and back. The same purchase price at different rates produces payments that differ by half again. If you are working out whether buying is affordable, work from the monthly payment and the bank income requirements, not from the price per metre. How banks assess income and what the LTV, DTI and DSTI limits mean is covered in the mortgage guide for foreigners.
The buy-versus-rent gap is at a record. Over the decade rent rose by less than inflation while buying rose by far more. If your horizon in the city is shorter than five to seven years, the arithmetic more often favours renting.
A short set of rules that will save you trouble when reading anything on this subject:
The data in this article comes from public releases: house price indices and structural wage statistics from the Czech Statistical Office (ČSÚ), transaction data from the Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre (ČÚZK), the Deloitte Real Index, Deloitte Develop Index and Deloitte Rent Index, Czech National Bank financial stability reports, city construction and permit statistics, and municipal data on short-term rentals. Periods and comparison bases are stated separately in each table, because the sources do not share them.