Not only people but also websites need to take a break so we will take leave for the month of August. Only partly because we will continue to bring you the news of the current happenings in the real estate sector. This summer will certainly not be uninteresting, although it is – like the previous summers – time to relax. But perhaps less than usual. The global economy seems to be at the crossroads of where it is heading at the moment: whether to a recurrence of a recession or – despite all sceptical voices – to a gradual recovery that would slowly begin to balance losses from previous years. Let us all believe that option B will be true.

The result of the parliamentary elections and subsequent creation of a coalition government of three centre-right parties have brought considerable hope to business and certainly to property developers circles. Now, after the approval of the coalition agreement, these slightly optimistic expectations can have more specific contours. The agreement, however, has nearly seventy standard text pages, we have therefore prepared a summary of what concerns in some way or another property development.

What are the parameters of success for any development project at the time of a long-term crisis? This question has been heard countless times in a number of various permutations during past discussions at Stavebné fórum. Despite the insightful and spirited answers and definitions, not every speaker from the above-mentioned field was able to praise themselves that they had estimated the future demand exactly during the projection of their investment plans and did not step off the trail. During the last, June, discussion meeting, Slavomíra Tóthová from the company Mlyny, a.s. presented exactly such a project.

Not so long ago the market situation with real estate agencies has culminated. The excess pressure of supply, as far as the brokering service in the execution of a trade transaction is concerned, was truly enormous and surpassed even the number of real estate properties which were in circulation during the boom. It did not concern exclusively the subject of business – real estate agencies were promising dizzying careers to prospective brokers who were supposed to turn professional after telegraphic training and in time become rich – guaranteed. Freely available real estate magazines were filled with photographs of successful “terminators“, reminiscent of the youthful faces of today‘s teenagers.

In mid-February Stavebné fórum.sk opened a discussion on shapes, forms and differences in the post-crisis property development. Representatives of self-governing bodies, investors, universities, architects and lawyers agreed on one conclusion then: post-crisis property development will differ vastly and it will function on principles totally different from today´s. Participants of the international conference project analysed this topic in more detail and on a wider international basis last Thursday in May. Again in Košice and again with focus on Development after crisis = time for quality: in architecture and in new economic-legal relations.

They are only catastrophic headlines in the media, in reality, nothing terrible is happening. The developers‘ problem is only that flats are being sold over a longer time period. This is how Petr Fanta, managing director and head of the board of directors of the British-Czech developer company CODECO, evaluates the frequently discussed crisis of the domestic residential market.

As we know them, HB Reavis Slovakia are building their Auparks simultaneously in several cities. Aupark in Piešťany was opened in April, it will be opened in Žilina in autumn and in Košice next year. They even expanded to the Czech Republic and Hungary. A shopping and leisure centre with this name will also be built in Brno, Ostrava and Hradec Králové. The property developer has already managed to build Aupark, Apollo Business Centre I and II, City Business Centre I-II in Bratislava. Their investment plan, valued at one and a half billion EUR, is dominated by Twin City and office complex CBC III-V.

It seems that financial-economic fitness of investors and the courage to new projects is gradually awakening and growing every day. While one group remains waiting tactically – they probably want to wait how the demand reacts to the daredevils´ steps and learn from possible mistakes of others, the second half have decided to act. Regardless the risk resulting from stepping into the unknown. So after a year and a half pause heavy machinery has started operation, to dig the ground and prepare infrastructure and foundations of future projects in Bratislava and its surroundings.

Some time ago we published an interview with Jiří Pácal. The real estate expert questioned the statistics on office properties. Although Prague Research Forum (PRF) was directly mentioned only once, the criticism concerned this association the most, it is PRF which generates majority of those statistics. We discussed the work of this association with Ondřej Novotný from King Sturge and Ondřej Vlk from Jones Lang LaSalle. (They shared most of the answers, therefore, we have not identified them by name.)

The Czech Republic has commerical office spaces like other market economies. Thanks to the youth of our property market and the (small) size of the Czech Republic, this sector is concentrated in Prague and partly in the Moravian capital. Consultancy Jones Lang Lasalle recently conducted a survey on the situation in other Czech regions.

Golf course with 18 holes, training tee, plot with the area of 120 hectares, hotel with 60 beds, restaurant, sports equipment shop, small conference centre, wellness including swimming pool and also a skiing slope with a ski lift within the “shooting range“. This is in short the Grund Resort Golf & Ski. From economic viewpoint, this accounts for an investment of CZK 150 mill. And for the property developer, company Grund with the seat in Mladé Buky in the Podkrkonoše region (region below Krkonoše mountains), years of preparations and construction which has not ended.

Colliers International, one of the leading international real estate companies, drew the attention to the continually overlooked potential of brownfields in Slovakia in its recent report. When the foreign investors arrive to our country, their focus is not exclusively on construction of new plants on greenfields, they also look at former or stagnating production complexes. And it is these that offer several underestimated advantages: a higher level of built-up area, infrastructure and a less complicated process of obtaining planning permissions, which significantly reduce the expenditure necessary for “clearing the target area“.

According to the database of the information system EIA – compiled by the analytic department of the development company Ekospol – construction of almost 15 000 new flats is currently in planning stages in Prague. It appears that despite the nearly fatal cooling of demand, residential developers still have big plans for the capital. The question is how many of these will be eventually realised. That is to say, there are still not many positive signals coming from the market.