A legal degree never hurts, but how did that help you get going here?
I have a transactional legal background. I’ve been in real estate for more than 10 years and a real estate lawyer since 2019. I was a transactional lawyer and did asset management as well. I find it really helpful to look at the transaction and the whole asset cycle from different perspectives. That’s where a lot of added value comes in. You’re not only looking at what happens during the transaction, but also what happens when you own the building.

It’s very exciting. I love to start really early on the deal because then you help the whole way through. Especially in deals where the transaction insurance makes a huge difference, that’s very rewarding. It’s also just a way for me to go out into the market and get the deal — that’s very satisfying. Especially since we’re the newcomer, with the less-established brand.

It sounds like before you were working on deals that other people brought to you. Now you’re out there, hunting on your own.
Exactly. When I was a transactional or real estate lawyer, I was doing prep work or sitting in meetings with a partner who got the deal. In asset management, we had landlord reps, so it wasn’t us going out. Now it’s me. It’s very satisfying to start from scratch. But it’s not just the transaction. I’m trying to build long-standing relationships with clients so I can help with the whole portfolio. They know they can call anytime. I think that’s very helpful.

Walk me through how a typical deal comes together in transaction insurance.
There are only a couple of options. Either very early on the client knows they want a clean exit, or they need to wind down the company after closing, or there’s some issue they need to secure. They might not want to give a corporate guarantee, so they’re looking for options. If they think of this early on and then I’m involved from the start. If there’s an issue that comes up and we solve it through transactional insurance.

How can insurance speed up a transaction?
Because you know early on that you don’t have to negotiate a lot of things in the SPA. The time limits, the financial limits, the baskets, all of those are usually covered by the insurance. The seller can wind down, and the buyer is okay with that, because they have the insurance company on the other side with a robust process for claims. Usually both sides end up satisfied.

If we come in later in a transaction because of specific risk that can’t be mitigated, that’s where you help overcome deal breakers.

What are the different products you offer?
There’s title insurance that secures your title to shares or real estate, including any identified title risks. Then there’s W&I insurance, warranty and indemnity, which secures the seller’s warranties in the SPA up to a limit. There’s also tax insurance, which secures tax risks above certain thresholds that you might not cover under W&I.

How has title insurance changed over the years?
The product has evolved a lot. It used to be a very formal product you got if there was an issue, so it acted more of a risk management tool, often connected with restitution proceedings. Now it’s more commercially minded. It’s also a financial tool because you save on lawyers’ fees since you don’t have to negotiate the SPA as much. For the seller, they get a clean exit. They can wind down the company rather than keeping the structure for seven years to warrant the fundamental warranties. More broadly, it’s moved on from being a very formal, fairly expensive tool to one that’s not so expensive anymore. We can do smaller deals and it’s more commercially minded.

Do Czech companies and international companies use it to the same degree?
Definitely not. Foreign entities usually use it a lot more. They’re used to it from their home countries. Czech clients know the old product from 10 or 15 years ago, which was expensive and more of a risk management tool. But as a Czech entity that understood the local risks, they usually didn’t need it unless there was a big issue.

Increasingly, Czech clients are going abroad where the other party required it, so they experience what’s essentially a completely new product. The pricing is way down. Once we explain it’s not only risk management but a financial tool, and they use it and find it’s a smooth process, they become more willing to use it again.

Just to be clear, they’re not buying the insurance from you. Explain where Reassurance sits in the food chain.
We’re a broker. We get all the information from the client, like the pricing and the insurance coverage from the insurers, both title and W&I. Then we prepare what we call an MBI report where we show the different options, different pricing, and propose what we feel is the best solution for the transaction. We take into account how the SPA or transaction is structured, what the due diligence findings are, and what both sides require.

How many other brokers are your clients typically talking to?
Usually you have only one insurance broker. The insurance companies have to give the same quote for the same deal. It’s not like they can give Reassurance a quote that’s 10% less than someone else, unless we present a different set of options. Technically you can shop for brokers before they go out and talk to the insurers. It’s not a cutthroat business. We’ll all try to get a deal. But I have to say the competition is very professional. Once you get the mandate, everyone else steps back.

How has the market changed even since you joined three years ago?
When I joined, I knew about five transactions and maybe one was insured, usually for some specific reason like a fund winding down. Now out of five transactions, maybe three are insured. The use of the product has accelerated as it’s become more commercial and more reasonably priced, even for smaller deals.

Which sectors are the busiest for you?
Everybody’s talking about residential, but that’s difficult for transactional insurance because at the end you have individual units. But built-to-rent is new, and we see a lot of BTR and student housing in Poland. I’m waiting to see if that comes here as well.

Poland uses insurance much more than the Czech Republic, partly because they’re much more funded by foreign entities. Here it’s about 90% Czech capital. In Poland it’s like 90% foreign capital. I sometimes see trends coming from Poland to the Czech Republic. In any case, for transactional insurance, it’s really logistics, office, and retail right now.

Do you think this year will be bigger than last, and next year bigger still?
I think it may be. We had a huge year in 2025, but I don’t think we’re slowing down in the next two years. What we saw last year was a lot of smaller deals in the first half and big ones in Q4. Now it’s been pretty consistent throughout the year. Small deals, big deals, mid-sized deals. It’s more of a mix rather than being weighted toward the end. We’ll see what Q4 brings.

Anna Vondrackova is Senior Transaction Advisor for REassurance

Also in ThePrime

A walk through Hila with Eduard Forejt (Passerinvest)

Penta joins J&T and AKIPIA to develop Bubny megaproject

Daniel Navratil (Wilsons): Competition for RE transactions is intense

The post Anna Vondrackova (REassurance): The market isn’t slowing down anytime soon first appeared on ThePrime.cz.

That expansion option makes sense especiall when you learn that BP vacates in April 2028; after that, a Foster + Partners retrofit will strip the 1990s-era shell back to its frame, add two storeys and a roof terrace, and deliver 11,200 sqm of net office plus terracing across three levels. LBBW/Berlin Hyp and Aareal Bank are providing acquisition finance; YardNine, the London development manager behind EightyFen and Fifty Paddington, is running the redevelopment. The Hong Kong landlord clearly didn’t feel comfortable taking on the redevelopment and releasing risk.

It’s the second London office buy for Karel Komarek’s group in under a year — KKCG quietly acquired The Burlian at 80 New Bond Street from Hines for roughly £195 million in late 2025. That brings its combined London outlay to about £486 million. The UK platform is run by Peter Holden, poached from Partners Group early this year.

Komárek’s not the only Czechoslova with a view of the Thames. Penta Real Estate launched a £1 billion residential JV with Ballymore — a 52-storey Canary Wharf tower, Embassy Gardens units, and a Brentford scheme totaling 1,000-plus flats. HB Reavis sold Worship Square in the City for £185 million, while Daniel Kretinsky’s EP Group has completed a £3.6bn takeover of the Royal Mail. Czech capital accounted for 36% of all CEE-region investment in H1 2026 — and the domestic markets can no longer absorb it. London looks like a good place for the surplus.

Also in ThePrime

A walk through Hila with Eduard Forejt (Passerinvest)

Penta joins J&T and AKIPIA to develop Bubny megaproject

Bezrealitky’s name and fees sparks real estate agency civil war

The post Komárek’s KKCG closes £291 million deal for BP’s London HQ first appeared on ThePrime.cz.

The shift is confirmed by Savills’ 2026 European OpRE Investor Sentiment Survey: 42% of respondents now target care homes, up from a three-year average of 25%. That 17-percentage-point jump — representing €540 billion in AUM —  is the largest of any operational real estate sector surveyed.

The preference for fund vehicles is itself accelerating. Savills’ survey found 23% of European investors now favour fund structures for operational real estate, up from just 8% in 2025. The Czech market mirrors this: all five major domestic players use fund vehicles as their primary delivery mechanism.

“Investment in the senior housing segment in the Czech Republic remains relatively limited for now, but volumes are growing rapidly,” said David Štrouf, Associate Investment Director at Savills.

Senevida is the incumbent heavyweight. Penta Hospitals acquired Alzheimer Home Group in 2018, then closed the purchase of SeneCura from emeis (formerly ORPEA) in April 2025. The two networks were unified under the Senevida brand in October 2025, creating a platform of 54 facilities and roughly 6,000 beds. That appears by far to be the country’s largest operator.

CREDITAS Nemovitostní I entered the sector in August 2025, buying real estate under six specialized Alzheimer Home facilities in Čáslav, Vodňany, Ostrava, Pardubice, Písek, and Zlošín. The 18,000 sqm deal is based on non-profit operators retaining long-term leases who managed more than 600 beds. These tend to be fully booked, its 100% occupancy an illustration of the alarming lack of supply.

Three more funds are scaling fast. Property Fund for Living is building from scratch. It has seven facilities open, two under construction in Nový Jičín and Ostrava and three more in preparation. Long-term, it’s targeting 50 centers and 6,000 beds. ESG SeniorCARE is the only EU fund that both owns and operates its facilities, a vertically integrated model with roughly 1,500 beds targeted by 2027. Then there’s Ambeat Group, founded by ex-PPF veteran Ivo Foltýn, who’s  assembling a portfolio through its care fund with a target of 2,500 beds by 2029.

The demand case is not speculative. Czech Ministry of Health data recorded nearly 85,000 Alzheimer’s patients in 2024, a figure projected to exceed 90,000 by 2030. A Boston Consulting Group study cited by Savills estimates the over-65 population will grow by 325,000 by 2035, with the over-80 cohort rising by 380,000 to roughly 835,000. Currently, 26,000 applicants are rejected annually from special-regime homes alone.

Private operators have a structural cost advantage. Market sources put private construction costs at around CZK 1.5 million per bed versus CZK 4–5 million for state-built facilities — a gap wide enough to sustain both investor returns and affordable pricing at CZK 50,000 per month, below the CZK 70,000-plus charged by many public institutions.

Also in ThePrime

Penta launches new office project on Hybernska

Filip Slabotinský (DMC Design & Engineering): We take a systematic approach to design

Charnwood’s Malešice Business Park targets July opening

The post Five fund targeting Czech senior care real estate’s critical lack of supply first appeared on ThePrime.cz.

The property, located roughly 40 minutes northeast of Bratislava, represents Manova’s first Slovak investment, acquired in 2017. At that time, the firm was still operated under the GLL Real Estate Partners brand. The facility serves as part of Amazon’s European distribution network, offering connections to key Slovak and international logistics hubs. The asset generated stable returns throughout the holding period.

Manova Partners maintains a substantial CEE presence with 14 office and 20 logistics properties totaling approximately €1.5 billion, boasting a 96 percent income-based occupancy. The company has completed €4.1 billion in regional transactions over two decades.

“With this transaction, we have successfully implemented the strategy defined for our mandate while further consolidating our strong market position in the CEE region,” claims Katarina Horvathova, Head of Transactions CEE at Manova Partners. “The sale in Sereď underscores the sustained demand for core assets.”

The Sereď disposal brings Manova’s 2025 transaction volume beyond €530 million, with the company hinting it has additional acquisitions and sales in the pipeline.

Also in ThePrime

David Mazáček (Upvest): We’re not trying to replace banks

Prague Matches London for Retail Openings; US Brands Surge

Dr. Max extends lease at Prologis Park Prague-Rudná

The post Manova sells Amazon Returns Center in Sereď first appeared on ThePrime.cz.

The purchase consolidates INVESTIKA’s position in a district where it already owns Galerie Butovice shopping center, adjacent land parcels, and the Avenir E office building. “Consolidating ownership in the area allows us to develop the commercial potential of these properties synergistically,” says Jaroslav Kysela, board member of the fund’s management company. It’s the kind of straightforward cluster strategy that tends to work—assuming the tenant stays put.

Butovice Offices becomes the fund’s 64th property, capping what Kysela describes as a record year for capital inflows. Since December 2024, INVESTIKA has deployed nearly CZK 5 billion across seven acquisitions spanning 10 locations. The most significant was November’s purchase of Centrum Południe 3 in Wrocław, a 21,500-square-meter office complex fully leased to BNY Mellon’s European headquarters operation. That building carries LEED Platinum certification with Europe’s second-highest environmental score. The fund has also picked up office properties in Szczecin, Poland, and an aviation training center near Vienna.

With assets under management now exceeding CZK 27 billion, INVESTIKA has positioned itself as the largest Czech and Slovak non-banking real estate fund serving retail investors. The fund is already working on another transaction scheduled for Q1 2026, suggesting the acquisition pace shows no signs of slowing.

Also in ThePrime

Generali buys GARBE Progresus Park Klášterec I

SPM Invest acquires Campus Science Park in Brno

GARTAL ramps up output, beginning with City Lofts

The post Butovice Offices bought by Investika first appeared on ThePrime.cz.

The property sits between Chomutov and Klášterec nad Ohří, and is fully leased to ISOLATE, a German manufacturer of technical thermal insulation.

“The logistics and industrial segment offer a highly compelling opportunity, providing robust rental income and strengthening the fund’s overall revenue stream,” notes Marek Bečička, Head of Real Assets at Generali Investments CEE.

“GARBE Park Klášterec I was our entry point into logistics real estate. We recognized its significant potential from day one,” says Lukáš Zrůst, Co-Founder of Progresus Group.

While transaction volumes have contracted sharply from their 2021-2022 peaks, best-in-class assets with solid fundamentals continue to trade. Whether this deal signals renewed momentum for Czech logistics remains to be seen.

“For GARBE, it’s key that our logistics parks continue to attract both tenants and investors over the long term,” says Garbe’s CEE MD Martin Polak. “GARBE Park Klášterec I is a newly built, fully leased hall and marks our fourth completed sale in the Czech Republic and Slovakia within the last eighteen months.”

Legal advisory for Generali Real Estate was provided by Clifford Chance, with tax and financial advisory by ASB and technical due diligence by Grinity. GARBE and Progresus were represented by the law firm CMS, Grafton Property Partners participated as acquisition advisory and TPA providing tax and financial advisory services.

Also in ThePrime

UBM Doubles Down on Residential as Labor Shortage Reshapes Prague Development

David Mazáček (Upvest): We’re not trying to replace banks

SPM Invest acquires Campus Science Park in Brno

The post Generali buys GARBE Progresus Park Klášterec I first appeared on ThePrime.cz.

The transaction value makes it one of the largest transactions in the office real estate segment in 2025, as the price exceeded CZK 2.3 billion. Savills, Clifford Chance, TPA and Sentient represented the seller with Wilsons, ASB and Cushman & Wakefield advising the buyer.

“Following last year’s successful acquisition of Prague’s Palác Křižík, it made sense for us to strategically strengthen our position in Brno as well,” said SPM partner Kateřina Skalická. “Our operational goal will be to further increase occupancy while maintaining a high standard of service for our tenants.” She said SPM Invest will continue searching for suitable real estate assets. “We will now be looking primarily for attractive residential properties, especially those located in Prague 5,” says Skalická.

Corebridge’s COO Kevin Reid said the sale showed the value in focusing on best-in-class development. “This discipline has allowed us to consistently achieve liquidity, even with larger office lot sizes in challenging markets.”

Stuart Jordan, CEO Savills, Central & Eastern Europe, adds: “Irrelevant of market cycle, real estate of high build quality will always show its resilience in attracting and retaining tenants and therefore benefitting from strong liquidity fundamentals.”

The post SPM Invest acquires Campus Science Park in Brno first appeared on ThePrime.cz.

It’s a question I keep asking, because the bifurcation of the investment market has become so profound. Q2 results only strengthened this trend as 90% of all real estate transactions were completed by local capital.

Do local funds know something the foreign funds don’t? What’s holding the foreign funds back?

For months, Michal Sotak (Cushman & Wakefield) has been telling anyone who will listen that yields are falling, driven by strong occupational fundamentals and the glut of available capital. My primary question for him was whether it’s still a good time to buy.

But before we got to the issue of pricing, Sotak said it’s important to understand how Czech funds choose their investment targets. And how Czech investors choose their funds.

“The important thing to understand is that retail investors decide based on emotions,” he says. “People need to feel that they’ve done the right thing by putting their money into a specific fund.” A few funds have managed to do this by building strong brands that manage to connect with investors.

“To be honest, I think that’s a difficult way to do it,” says Sotak. “Another way to do it is to buy buildings that are sexy, but these are almost without exception the well-known shopping centers.”

In the end, he says, “the financial advisor himself or herself needs to create emotions when they’re talking to the investor. That’s why the distribution network is so important, because they’re where these emotions of trust and confidence are created.”

In order to understand what drives funds to buy which buildings, Sotak has spent the last year meeting not just the acquisition managers, but their sales teams. It’s easy to forget that most of them sell a variety of funds and investment vehicles. Part of his mission in speaking to the distribution teams is to give them the information they need to convince their customers that property is a good bet. But he’s learning from them at the same time.

And one of the key insights he’s taken from this is that unlike SICAV real estate funds, deep analysis of ROI and WALT indicators is not what drives the consumer market. “When it comes to retail, emotions rule. If you were to do a plot of inflows into funds versus returns, you would see that the funds with the highest inflows have the lowest returns. If a fund was losing money, that would create negative emotions. But in a way, it doesn’t really matter whether they’re returning 3% or 4%.

“If you look at what investment products are available for Czechs, they can buy US shares, but they don’t do this on a large scale. And what else can they do? Beyond property, there aren’t so many financial instruments that are easy to understand where it’s easy to send money every month.”

Is it a good time to be buying commercial real estate in the Czech Republic now?

Michal Sotak: Absolutely.

Why?

Sotak: Because the balance of demand and supply on the capital market is massively in favor of demand for product rather than supply. I’m no macroeconomist, so I won’t make any predictions about the next five years, but in the next 18 months, my prediction is that yields will still go down. The only limit on that will be borrowing costs, which are currently at, let’s say, 4.25. That puts something of a floor on pricing, but the yield will be sharper 12 months from now. Therefore, unless there is a sudden dramatic change in the external environment, if you buy in the next few months, you’re likely to make money in this kind of tactical, short-term sense. I wouldn’t want to make longer-term predictions.

Obviously, this isn’t investment advice, but which sectors do you guess that applies to?

This applies to offices and to shopping centres. It applies to industrial, but keep in mind that the industrial occupational market has weakened in the last year. For various reasons, demand for space is lower than it was, say, in 2022.

Automotive was still strong then, eshops were still booming from COVID and there was still traditional 3PL retail demand…

Exactly. These days, the eshop sector is consolidating and the automotive sector is undergoing a transformation which will ultimately mean they’ll need less space. So, when you are buying industrial, you have to be very mindful of the rents you underwrite. The sector you need to be careful about now is retail parks, where there’s a lot of supply. There’s something like 30 retail parks being built every year and that simply has a negative impact on rental levels. Otherwise, with offices, shopping centers and hotels, there is no reason for me to believe that they will not increase in price in the next 12 months.

What you want to do as a buyer in this environment is go early and buy from people who want to exit strategically, not opportunistically. These are usually western investors that are simply leaving the market.

Speaking of which, can we talk about the unwillingness, or inability of foreign investors to pay as much as Czech real estate investors? When foreigners accuse Czech funds of overpaying, what do they mean? Are they right? Or are they just saying what investors always say after losing a tender?

Intellectually, the key reason why western investors can’t compete with local money is because they don’t underwrite value growth. So, when they buy a building, they underwrite the rental income, but they don’t underwrite the appreciation in value.

They won’t do it on principle?

Exactly. Whilst Czech funds will do it, because their performance measure, the KPI, the NAV growth actually does reflect cash-plus-revaluation. Revaluation is very often 50% of their returns. Local funds are incentivized to underwrite value growth and to manage it honestly — because the valuation process isn’t 100% rigid. Western investors don’t do this very often because they aren’t evergreen, open-ended structures. Their investors aren’t interested in it.

There’s no clear-cut way, then, to say who’s over-paying, who’s under-valuing and whether pricing has adjusted appropriately?

First of all, there has been a price adjustment. We went from sub 4% yields to in general five-plus yields. In the west the shift was let’s say 250 basis points, whilst here it was probably less…but there was price adjustment. As for whether the Czech funds are overpaying… overpaying relative to what? They need to get their returns, which in the end are, let’s say 3% to 5%. It’s not so easy to judge what it means and they’re getting those returns from the buildings that they’re buying. In that sense they’re not overpaying.

I think a bigger question is, is this pattern of buying sustainable? And my answer is no, it is not sustainable because if you look at the balance between capital versus the product on the Czech market, it simply can’t continue forever. What will happen is that that money will go elsewhere. We will export capital and Czech funds will buy abroad. Otherwise, they’ll get stuck with cash on their accounts with no buildings to buy.

Czech investors are already having an impact on the Polish market. If they’re paying 6.5% for Polish industrial, are they going to be happy paying 5% at home?

If you pay 6.5% for industrial in Poland, that 6.5% has 30% incentives built into it, so it’s actually 6.5 x 0.7. It’s actually not necessarily a better deal than what you’re getting in Czechia. But in general, if you’re asking whether Czech funds will become more sophisticated by investing abroad, I think the answer is yes, they will. The biggest ones have inflows of €30 million, €40 million per month. They can’t do small deals in Czechia because they won’t be spending money fast enough to deploy the capital they’re raising. They have to do big deals, so they probably have to do them abroad. And then they’ll have to manage those big buildings. The top Czech funds will grow into essentially into the DEKAs of the world, and it will be a professionalization process for them.

Also in ThePrime

Robert Ides (ARETE): We’ll recycle our equity abroad

Michal Bilý (108 Real Estate): Q2 new industrial leases strengthen

Karin Shalev Shogol (AFI CZ): We want 5,000 flats in 5 years

The post Michal Sotak (Cushman & Wakefield): Emotions drive investment first appeared on ThePrime.cz.

Industrial properties led investment activity with 28% of total volume, followed by hotels at 23%, office buildings at 20%, while retail assets came in at 18%. In fact, Q2’s €630 million was considerably slower than the remarkable first three months of the year.

Industrial assets maintained their leading position with 34% of quarterly volume, while hotels captured 24% of activity, boosted by the Four Seasons Hotel Prague sale.

Office properties accounted for 22% of Q2 volume, including the deals for the Visionary and Stará Celnice buildings in Prague. There was just one significant residential deal, which was also off the 3-deal Q1 pace.

Domestic investors dominated the market throughout the first half, accounting for 77% of total investment volume and completing 31 of the 34 transactions. Only one second-quarter deal involved foreign capital. Savills hints that H2 activity will exceed both 2024 levels and long-term averages, and that 2025 is set to become the strongest investment year since 2020.

Also in ThePrime

New Podcast with Mark Robinson (EnCor Wealth Mgmt)

CPI offers to buy back 7% bonds at 7.75%

Reality check for landlords: Prague Q2 resi rents fall

The post Savills: H1 investments soar to €2.1 billion in Czechia first appeared on ThePrime.cz.

Western real estate developers continue to hesitate with investments in Central Europe, but Czech investors of all sizes continue to put money into Czech real estate funds. How are your inflows this year and have they changed over the last couple of years?
I would say there has always been a big affinity of Czech people towards real estate and a kind of revival of the economy and this brought a kind of good mood on the market. Back in 2022 or 2023, you would read articles about the real estate bubble bursting. People were afraid at that time and were avoiding real estate. Now they see that no disaster took place and they’ve decided to invest in something they understand.

So you noticed a decline in inflows during that time?
In those years, our fund was on a growth curve, but we weren’t representative of the market trends, the way some of the other bigger funds with a longer history of fundrasing were. They saw quite a significant decrease in fundraising. We experienced growth stagnation, but not actual decline. That changed to quite significant growth by the end of 2023, so 2024 was an excellent year for fundraising. We doubled our fund last year and this year (2025) is developing even better. We should double the fund once again this year. We’re not there yet but we’re on a good path.

How much did you collect last year in total?
About CZK 500 million. This year we should be around CZK 1 billion in new fundraising,

Your fund was relatively young when Covid hit, which makes it the first time you had to deal with challenging times. Interest rates were low, and investors were easier to find.
Until around 2020, it was actually very easy to invest in rental apartments then because the mathematics were simple. There was a market equilibrium. Rental yields were basically stable, not just in Prague but in the district cities. In a smaller city, you could buy a rental building with a yield of 7% and a 3% loan from a bank. That means you’d make money both on the rent and on the difference between the yield and the cost of capital.

Then in 2020, prices in regional cities started growing even faster than in Prague. At first, the interest rates didn’t go up, but then they started growing quickly. Suddenly in 2021, instead of buying apartment buildings with a 7% rental yield, you’d be lucky to find deals for 4%. But the bank would lend you for 7%. That killed the market for a while, because there’s no point buying a rental apartment building in a small city at a 4% yield. At the same time, you couldn’t finance it with bank money.

Speaking of which, your LTV is rather low right now, below 20%.
Leverage has never been our focus. We were always very careful with leverage, using it on reasonable scale. When interest rates went up, we just paid off all the loans that were on a floating interest rate. We only kept only the ones that had fixed interest rates at good levels. But there were two or three years when the market was almost dead. During those years we had to redo our business model. Instead of just making our money on rents and the low cost of capital, we needed to become a company that works actively on buildings. That could be to increase the rental space, upgrade the quality of the housing or to optimize the size of the apartments.

We’ve kept this mindset. Whenever we invest in a building, we need to have a strategy how to increase its value. We don’t just buy and lease it, but somehow to improve it. Anyone who’s serious about investing into rental apartments knows it’s not just a passive source of income.

My guess is that a lot of investors in SICAV funds start off by buying apartments on their own, and only then learn about all the risks. It’s also just a lot of work. Why not leave that to someone else?
That’s exactly the logic. Most of our investors have some investment apartments in their portfolio already, either as a plain vanilla investment, or something their children can inherit someday. Today, all of them know what it’s like to have a tenant call you on Christmas Eve because, say, the toilet is leaking. As a fund, we take over all of those problems. But we also make it possible to diversify your risk, simply because the fund has so many tenants. It’s not like renting a big building to a single tenant.

Also in ThePrime

Pavel Malecha (ČSOB): Rental Resi Fueled our Recent Lending

Petr Florian (Avison Young): Want to save on rent? Pay your agent!

ThePrime Pod: Karel Stransky on the regionalization of supply chains

The post Fond Českého Bydlení on track to raise CZK 1bn first appeared on ThePrime.cz.