The daily Lidové noviny takes a detailed look into the problem of rising real estate prices that are driving the middle class out of the biggest Czech cities. At the heart of the problem, it claims, is the amount of credit available to finance residential real estate. The best statistic to illustrate the problem is the record level of lending last year, which was CZK 232bn. While recent restrictions placed on who banks can lend to have reduced the volume of sales, they’ve had no impact on the level of prices. LN writes that the key problem is the lack of supply cause by a construction approval process on bureaucratic steroids. The result is that waiting times for a construction process are similar to those in Pakistan and Nepal. Whereas the world average is 250 days, investors in the Czech Republic must sit around for five years. In Denmark, the same process takes 64 days and in Germany just 126. In 2006, writes Lidové noviny, 71,000 construction permits were issued. In 2017 that figure fell to 50,000.v
