The latest plan by the Czech Ministry of Regional Development is to increase the parking capacity of new projects and tighten conditions for developers. It has presented its proposal to adjust the conditions for building parking in the Czech Republic, which experts say will increase housing prices, according to the online daily Seznamzprávy.cz.
The increased need for parking construction would have a clear impact on housing prices, according to real estate experts. But the Ministry for Regional Development (MMR) is defending its plan despite its long-standing efforts to improve housing affordability. "The issue of all public interests must be seen as a whole, it is not possible to see it exclusively from the perspective of the housing shortage, even though it is a large and serious problem. At the same time, it is necessary to take into account the fact that today there are 6 425 417 cars on the vehicle register. If we do not want to have cars everywhere on the streets, we must also deal with parking," Petr Waleczko, spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, explained to Seznamzprávy.cz.
In the context of residential construction, the technical standard has so far determined the need for one parking space for flats up to 100 sqm. According to the draft decree of the MMR, one parking space should be created for an apartment of up to 70 sqm. In practice, therefore, any larger apartment will have to have a parking space for two cars. "The basis for the proposal was research by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (TAČR) and the fact that the average size of apartments is decreasing and the number of cars is increasing," said Petr Waleczko, spokesman for the ministry. The research, however, dealt mainly with transport engineering issues, not the impact on Czechs' housing, and was moreover produced in 2013, but since then the cost of building and affordability of housing has increased significantly.
Today, the construction of a parking space typically costs an investor hundreds of thousands of crowns. In the case of larger cities and the construction of underground parking, the cost rises to millions. "The cost of one parking space in our calculations today comes out to about CZK 1.5 million (EUR 63,000). The high construction costs associated with building them make the construction of an apartment building more expensive," confirmed Juraj Murín, director of project development at Skanska Residential. The new regulation would affect all municipalities and towns except Prague, Brno and Ostrava, which are governed by their own building regulations.
