January 25 was a legendary night for Prague’s property community. A sell-out crowd filled Žofin Palace to bursting for the second annual edition of ThePrime Real Estate Gala. Building on the traditions established at last year’s break-out event, the 420 guests enjoyed a night of entertainment, incredible food and wine and awards. But the event has become a platform for the Czech property to display its generosity. Incredibly, more than CZK 1.7 million was raised through the charity raffle and the art auction for Rozum a Cit z.s., an NGO that supports foster children and the families that care for them.
Overseeing the proceedings with energy and style was Peter Šimůnek, editor in Chief of the Czech edition of Forbes magazine. It was his energy and determination to raise the highest possible amount drove the bidding to completely unanticipated levels. Among his other most important duties was to dispatch the nine awards for achievement in 2023 to their deserving owners. Three of them were for professional services. Cushman & Wakefield made a clean sweep of the agency awards, winning both Leasing Agency of the Year and Capital Markets Agency of the Year. And it was with a great cheer that the Wilsons team came to the stage to accept Legal Real Estate Firm of the Year. A public photo gallery of the event can be found here. A complete gallery of images will be available soon for subscribers to ThePrime.
On the development front, there was also a clear winner. This year’s nominations for office projects may have been lacking in numbers, but the four projects were of extremely high quality. Still, it was always going to be tough to compete with Penta Real Estate’s Masaryčka, which was the jury’s overwhelming choice for Office Development of the Year. Petr Palička also came to the stage at the end of the evening to accept the final prize for Penta Real Estate: Developer of the Year.
But there four more prizes to come before that. Trigema’s CFO Jakub Korf came to the stage to accept the Best Residential Development award for his company’s iconic and successful project Fragment. And Best Industrial Developer of the Year for 2023 went to Panattoni, a prize accepted for the team by its director Pavel Sovička.
The innovation for this year’s Gala was to include a crucial component of the property ecosystem: real estate investment funds. To create this new award, ThePrime partnered with the team at VŠE ISTI, which monitors and publishes key indicators for the country’s major funds on a quarterly basis. Therefor, the primary criteria for inclusion on the nomination is participation and cooperation in this project. Judges were provided with data for the past 36 months and asked to judge the funds on that basis. The process produced two clear winners in the award’s debut year: Accolade Industrial Fund won the Best Real Estate Investment Fund – Qualified Investors. And Mint rezidenční fond was the winner for Best Real Estate Investment Fund – Retail.
The jury was made up of a collection of 18 judges active in the Czech property market who come from a variety of professional backgrounds. Winners were in a single-round of secret ballot voting process in which the candidate with the most votes is declared the winner. Second and third prizes were not determined. To ensure transparency, the voting results were audited by ASB, a partner of the event. Event producer Robert McLean did not take part in the voting and had no influence upon the result.
Guests who would like to make subsequent anonymous donations to Rozum a Cit z.s. or who have questions about the organization should feel free to get in touch with Robert McLean by mail or phone, or with the organization directly.
The Partners for this year’s event were CBRE, CTP, Cushman & Wakefield, Dual Asset, iO Partners, 108 Agency, Panattoni, Sentient, Urbanity and VŠE ISTI.
ThePrime Real Estate Gala is organized by Robert McLean, founder of the property investment and development portal ThePrime.cz. He and his wife Eva McLean have been temporary foster caregivers to newborn babies since 2012. This year’s Gala was the second edition of what is now an established, annual event. In addition to awarding industry prizes to the sector’s top companies, the Gala serves as a venue to raise money for, and awareness about foster care.
