With apartments in larger cities becoming too expensive for the middle class, an increasing number of people are interested in buying houses in smaller towns and villages outside them. The math is simple. For the same price that they could live in an average-sized apartment, families can live in a house with more space if they leave the city. The Czech Statistics Office reports that last year, construction began on nearly 20,000 houses. That’s the most since 2008, just before the great financial crisis hit. The economic daily Hospodářské Noviny reports that many construction companies that specialize in family homes have contracts for several years to come. Some are having to turn down orders for new work because they don’t have the capacity to build any more. Nearly one quarter of all homes under construction are being built in the Central Bohemia region, which surrounds the City of Prague. The biggest demand is for locations near commuter railways, which make it easy to access the center of Prague quickly. But real estate agents warn that new land suitable for construction is becoming a scarce commodity.
