The reduction of VAT from 27 to 5 percent resulted in a significant increase in order numbers of prefabricated home manufacturers and distributors – but the lack of assembly team poses a problem as many of the professionals went to work abroad during the years of the crisis.
According to József Kárpáti, head of the pre-fab chapter of the National Alliance of Construction Contractors (ÉVOSZ) their best year was in 2009 when more than 2200 light pre-fab homes were built. The chapter of 31 companies was commissioned for 950 homes that year. In the last year however there were only 100 commissions, while the number of companies in the chapter decreased to only 7.
It seems the reduction of VAT had a great positive effect on the market as these companies were commissioned for more than a hundred pre-fab houses since, which means that they had more work in January than in the whole last year. The only problem is that there are not enough professionals who could perform the assembly of these homes.
An assembly team normally consists of 5 people and they are not easy to train, it can't be done in a matter of days. But the situation is so bad that there are no applicants even for the newspaper advertisements. The only option these companies see is to call back those to Hungary who left in favor of work in Germany in past years. This is however only possible if they provide wages equal to German ones.
Also, the market of pre-fab home is growing abroad, so companies will be trying to retain their professionals.
This means that the cost of assembling a house increases by around 2 million Forints. After the VAT reduction the price advantage of a pre-fab house would be 5 million Forints, but this way it shrinks to 3 million according to Kárpáti.
