The market for one-room apartments in Ukraine remains one of the most competitive segments of real estate, yet the pressure on buyers and tenants is distributed unevenly. According to OLX Real Estate data, cited by RBC-Ukraine, competition in the long-term rental market is almost four times higher than in the purchase market. In certain regions, more than 40 potential tenants are competing for a single rental apartment, making renting a noticeably more tense segment than buying secondary housing.

Buying secondary housing: where competition is highest

The highest competition among buyers of secondary housing has been recorded in Kirovohrad Oblast — an average of 11.2 responses per listing. A nearly identical figure is shown by Cherkasy Oblast (11.1). High and active demand is also observed in Poltava, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Ternopil, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts. At the opposite end of the scale are Odesa and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts, where there are only 2.1 responses per listing, as well as Rivne Oblast (2.4).

Renting: four times more tense

The situation in the long-term rental market is significantly sharper. The absolute leader is Cherkasy Oblast, where a single listing receives an average of 40.2 responses. More than 20 responses per apartment are recorded in Volyn, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Zakarpattia oblasts. Thus, in a number of regions, tenants have to fight for a single apartment far more actively than buyers do.

Kharkiv as a telling example

The difference in behavior between buyers and tenants is clearly illustrated by Kharkiv Oblast: a listing for the sale of a one-room apartment there receives only 3.4 responses, whereas a rental listing receives 30.5. This is one of the highest figures among all regions of Ukraine and direct evidence that demand for purchase and demand for rental are shaped by different logics and on different scales.

Contradictory data

An important methodological caveat must be taken into account: the key metric in the materials is the number of responses per listing, not the exact number of individuals. In popular headlines this figure is often simplified to the phrasing "40 people per one apartment," whereas the underlying data refer to 40.2 responses per listing. Moreover, Oksana Ostapchuk, head of the sales development sector at OLX Real Estate, emphasizes that a high figure does not always mean only a sharp rise in demand: it can also form when there are simply fewer available apartments on the market. The situation in each region is influenced by the volume of supply, internal migration, housing affordability, and the security environment.

Price context

The data on competition complement the picture of price dynamics: in Vinnytsia, one-room apartments are valued at around 56 thousand dollars, while rent starts from 15 thousand hryvnia per month. In Kyiv, real estate prices are not falling even against the backdrop of the war — one-room apartments cost on average around 70 thousand dollars, and two-room apartments more than 100 thousand. The combination of these factors explains why the rental segment in a number of regions is overheated more than the purchase segment.