How Polish real estate developers can sell more to Eastern European buyers?

How Polish real estate developers can sell more to Eastern European buyers?

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, there has been a significant increase in the demand for the rental and purchase of residential properties in Poland among the Ukrainian and Russian-speaking communities. Since 2016, Ukrainians have become the largest group of investors in Polish real estate among foreigners, and last year the number of Ukrainians who purchased apartments in Poland increased by 35% compared to 2021. The number of Belarusians increased by 83%.

According to ZUS data, 739,000 Ukrainians have already been officially employed, i.e., more than half of those who received a PESEL (December 2022).

From the outbreak of the war in Ukraine to the end of June 2023, 29.4 thousand were registered in the CEIDG database as private entrepreneurs. 

In addition, a 70% drop in demand in the residential real estate market in Ukraine (according to Ernst & Young and Forbes Ukraine) forces some local primary real estate market players to expand to neighboring countries, especially Poland.

At the same time, competition in marketing in this niche is low, which allows new players to aggressively enter this market. However, is the Polish market ready for increased demand from Eastern European buyers?

We analyzed 1000+ requests in Google, META, websites, and sales departments of the 20 largest Polish developers. We have concluded that the Ukrainian-Russian-speaking community of Poland and potential investors do not receive enough information to decide about buying or renting an apartment. Below we will analyze why this is so.

What Google and META analysis showed

1. Growing needs and interest. Google searches in Ukrainian and Russian in the category of buying an apartment in Poland showed an increase of 240% (518,710 per month in 2022 vs. 214,480 per month in 2021).
 

For 7 months of 2023, the number of these requests was 53,490

2. Low marketing competition. The cost per click for advertisers wanting to sell properties in the capital of Poland is four times cheaper than the cost for developers in the capital of Ukraine (UAH 79.24 = PLN 8.90). First, as mentioned at the beginning, this proves the low marketing competition in the Polish market, which allows new players to aggressively enter this market.

The average price of a click at the end of August 2023 is UAH 14.02 (PLZ 1.56).

This applies to both the primary and secondary real estate markets. There are 2.8 ads per ad on the secondary real estate market and 2.2 on the Polish real estate market.
 

3. Over 1.2 million new devices in META. In 2022, 1,233,600 devices with Ukrainian- and Russian-language layouts were added to Facebook and Instagram in Poland. According to an analysis based on the top 20 developers in Poland, 40% do not run Facebook ads at all, and only 5% run ads targeted at Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking audiences.

What was shown by the analysis of websites and sales departments of developers

Only 10% of the surveyed group have a Ukrainian/Russian version of their website, 20% have Ukrainian/Russian-speaking consultants, and 35% of incoming inquiries were simply ignored because the sales team did not answer the phone during working hours or call back later.

35% of ignored incoming calls is a huge number that can thwart any company's marketing efforts. Moreover, this particular number in the study is not directly correlated with customers from Eastern Europe but refers to the overall work organization of sales departments. To minimize losses in such situations, you should use call tracking and end-to-end analytics systems that allow you not to miss incoming calls and analyze which marketing channel worked better and attracted the customer.