Abstract
The economy is subject to periodic changes in activity, which is apparent in the financial situation of households and enterprises. However, the recent economic crisis has been particularly severe. After the great increase in economic activity, which in many countries was connected with the boom in the real estate market, it experienced a sudden turn for the worse, including the broadly understood construction sector. This contributed to a slowdown of the growth rate, or even a permanent economic downturn. The authors have undertaken an analysis of the situation in the construction sector and the condition of residential real estate markets in selected Central European countries, and next, on the basis of a database on the financial situation of selected construction companies constructing buildings in those countries, searched for an answer to the question of how much the construction sector and the analyzed enterprises changed their activity in the recent years. For the purpose of the analysis, a database of over 340 entities from the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary was created. The work is of a comparative nature, which allows the scale of the processes studied in the individual countries to be identified.