Price Trend in Valuer`s Practice in Poland

Market economy has existed in Poland for almost thirty years. While a new economy was being formed, new laws were established. However, the issue of collecting data on real property has not been properly solved, as there is no nationwide database referring to real property. Information on real property in Poland is collected in the Residential Property Price Register in county offices. Different computer programs are used to create regional databases, however these databases are not compatible and the information gathered in the databases is incomplete.The obstacles in access to full information on real property hamper the work of valuers, particularly in defining trends in property price changes. For the purpose of a comparative approach to property valuation, the Real Estate Management Act requires that time changes in the price of similar property should be taken into account. For the last 20 years, the President of the Central Statistical Office of Poland has had to publish the real property price change index, however the lack of real property information was the reason why the work on defining the index has not been fully completed. For three years, there have been published the GUS President’s announcements concerning the change in market prices of properties purchased by household in a quarter of a year under research compared to their prices in the preceding quarter according to the Regions. For these reasons valuers in Poland use transaction prices and property description from notarial acts and they determine the price change rate themselves.Purpose: The purpose is to present the practices of price change factor determination followed by valuers in Poland, especially the degree to which they are known to valuers and applied.Design/methodology/approach:Results of a survey among property valuers in order to recognise their knowledge of identified methods and their application in practice; The appraisal of possible utilisation of the methods of stipulating price change rates, illustrated with an example of the local real property market (quantitative methods).FindingsMethods of stipulating the property price change ate identified so far are subdivided into simple methods (e.g. average, median, method of tracing representative price of the property) and methods which also include its characteristics (e.g. repeat-sales regression method, hedonic methods, mixed methods). Appraisers in Poland usually use simple methods."