Reliable, old-fashioned handy-man/contractor in or near Budapest.

If your HU friends could help you look online on sites such as Kapu.hu you might be able to find a day worker or plumber to help with a minor WC repair. Most of the good contractors usually are busy and it takes awhile to get them over.
It is always a good idea to know a tiny bit about repairs for any home owner. Never know with these old flats when something will go wrong.
A leaking WC may just need a minor fix like a new seal or unit in the tank.
Good luck, we so far, knock on wood have been able to sort out these minor  repairs on our own.
When things go wrong then we all wish were had just rented, so much easier to call the owner and let them deal with it all.
Good luck, to find a reasonable priced repairman it is good to be able to get on a HU site and they all are in Hungarian.
There is a online white or yellow page phone directory which advertises businesses that speak English in HU.
Not sure about their link but a bit of searching should bring it up.

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

or plumber

When so many the OP knows appears to be saying his place needs upgrading, I would only recommend a plumber. A professional will be able to see if this is a major or minor problem.

A simple "handy-man" may just fix an existing problem. But not address a more complex, underlying soon to fail issues, which if not fixed now, for a little money, may become a real expensive repair later when full failure occurs.

Paying a little more now for a professional plumber is investment in peace of mind.

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

It is always a good idea to know a tiny bit about repairs for any home owner. Never know with these old flats when something will go wrong.

I was thinking the same.

Lots of old buildings.

Lots of old building sold cheap and bought because they were cheap.

And they were cheap for a reason: many need upgrades, repairs and remodeling (one tends to get what one pays for).

It really helps indeed to have some basic DIY skills. Or at least develop those skills. Plenty of on-line DIY self sites to assist.

Yes, cheap is not always a good investment.
When we bought our home inS. Cal in the early 1980's I fell in love with the floor plan, the pool and the neighborhood. It was a bit more then we wanted to spend at the time but my husband indulged me and made an offer on the house.
Silly, naive us, we bought it and at the same time gave out two law suits to the seller as he was a lawyer and we had two pressing law suits to settle.
He did ok by us with the law suits BUT because he had our legal business we later were sorry we gave the suits to him.
Our first property that we ever bought, we were way too trusting. Ever y time we visited the house ( only 2 times) we noticed the lawn was very wet and the walkway was covered in water.
We did ask about it but they buyer always had a good story, they had just watered or some other BS.
The day we moved into the house we realized  we  had  been done us in. The water main was broken.
Between moving in, getting out young son organized and getting the dog settled in, I lost my darn mind.
My husband turned off the water main just as I needed water the most. Had to beg him to turn it on for bathing etc. Had to call up a plumber the next day and have the front lawn dug out about 15 feet and all the pipes changed.
Should of made the buyer pay for it but was afraid he would mess up our two pending law suits if we got angry with him.
Hard lesson learned, do never mix business with another business.
At least he handled our law affairs alright.
Nothing worst then plumbing issues, not suppose to happen on moving day.
Darn lawyer made money left and right off of us suckers!!

Thanks - will look into that website you mention.  In this case, I know exactly what the problem is (it is actually with the base of the WC, not the cistern), and I know what the fix is (before carrying out the full renovation).  However, the couple of people I have had look at it only want to carry out the full renovation-spec repair, and cannot get their heads around the idea that this needs to be a mend-and-make-do repair until the renovation takes place in 18 months or so!

Klsallee - perhaps I wasn't clear in my original post, but I was always fully aware that my I place would need a full renovation, and that was what I wanted to do.  However, this is about making the place 'function' until I am ready to do that, as it requires considerable planning, and for my neighbours to be ready to share in the pain relating to fixing the water supply and so forth.

I am capable of many DIY tasks, but I don't particularly wish to spend a weekend removing and re-setting a WC bowl, hence wanting to find someone to do it.

I hope that makes more sense now.