This is an index, not a price tag in forints. Its benchmark was set at 100 in 2015, so the reading of 423.2 means the price level captured by the measure is 323.2% above that baseline. It does not show what a typical flat costs; it tracks how prices have changed over time.
The record level should not be mistaken for a record pace. The move from 100 in 2015 to 126 in 2016 was proportionally larger than the latest annual increase. Even so, the index has risen in every annual reading after 2015, with the latest move taking it from 339.7 to 423.2.
In House prices continued to rise this year, the Hungarian National Bank attributed the 2025 increase to strong investment demand—including household savings released from government bonds and, later, the Home Start subsidy programme—meeting limited housing supply.
That matters because buyers seeking a home must compete with investors treating housing as an asset. Subsidies can help individual households finance a purchase, but when supply is constrained, extra demand can also feed into prices. For would-be buyers, the index points to a larger financing hurdle unless incomes and savings have kept pace; existing owners have gained housing wealth on paper. The index alone cannot settle the affordability question, however, because it contains no measure of household income, mortgage costs or transaction volumes.