Why Waiting for the ‘Right Moment’ in Real Estate Is the Biggest Mistake You Can Make

If you’re waiting for the “right moment” to buy property in the Czech Republic, you might be making one of the most expensive financial mistakes of your life. Many people hope that interest rates will drop and prices will stabilize before they buy. But history shows that this “perfect moment” almost never comes.

The Rollercoaster of Mortgage Rates

Over the last twenty years, the Czech housing market has gone through periods of both unusually favorable conditions and challenging moments, yet the overall trajectory demonstrates that property ownership has consistently proven advantageous in the long run:

• Early 2000s – Rates were often above 8%, making mortgages expensive and less accessible.
• 2010s – Rates steadily fell as banks competed, and by 2020–21 they hit record lows around 2%.
• 2022 – Inflation forced rates back up above 5%, their highest in two decades.

These swings in rates changed how much people could borrow — but they didn’t change the fact that property values kept moving up.

At the beginning of the 2000s mortgage interest rates were still very high, often exceeding 8 percent, which limited access to housing finance and kept the volume of mortgage loans relatively small. As banks began to compete more aggressively, they introduced longer maturities and more flexible loan conditions, which, together with monetary easing, led to a gradual reduction in interest rates.

By the mid-2010s rates were falling steadily and by 2020 and 2021 they reached record lows of around 2 percent. These historically cheap mortgages fuelled demand, and because new housing supply lagged behind, especially in urban areas, property prices surged at a pace not seen before, with year-on-year growth exceeding 20 percent in some periods.

Why Prices Rarely Go Down for Long

This trend changed abruptly in 2022 when rising inflation forced the central bank to tighten monetary policy. Mortgage interest rates climbed rapidly to above 5 percent, the highest level in two decades, which immediately reduced affordability for households. Many buyers were pushed out of the market and demand weakened, resulting in a short-term slowdown in property price growth. In certain regions nominal

If you’re waiting for the “right moment” to buy property in the Czech Republic, you might be making one of the most expensive financial mistakes of your life. Many people hope that interest rates will drop and prices will stabilize before they buy. But history shows that this “perfect moment” almost never comes.