Saturday, November 25, 2006

 

what's going to happen in 2007?

Krakow, Poland's third biggest city and second real estate market is just some 70km east of Katowice. Buying an apartment in Krakow is twice as much expensive as in Katowice. However, renting a similar apartment costs more or less the same.
It is said, than most of the demand for apartments in Krakow is driven by foreign investors, both speculative and long term. At current price and rent level the average capitalization rate reached 4% this summer.


Since Katowice offers capitalization rate of 8%, and is a core city of 8th EU's urban area, what's going to happen in 2007?

# posted by Michał @ 4:05 PM 1 comments

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

 

time to go east?

In April 2006 McKinsey (www.mckinsey.com) organised a conference on IT and business process offshoring possibilities in Eastern Europe. The summarising report is available for downloading here: http://www.mckinsey.com/locations/warsaw/officenews/pdfs/EESTCOM_report_final.pdf

The bottom line is:

  1. Eastern Europe is now only marginal BPO location (1% of global market)
  2. It has attractive risk/wage level ratio
  3. Has additional benefits for Western Europe, like: geographic, cultural, regulatory proximity and other languages than English
  4. Offshoring will likely create 100 000+ jobs
  5. There is enough talent supply, but in non-obvious locations

I would like to concentrate on no.5: non-obvious locations. Let's quote: “... to ensure adequate talent supply, companies should increasingly venture outside the “first wave” locations (such as Prague, Budapest, Bratislava and Kraków) into second and third wave locations with currently little or no offshoring activity.” And later, on page 17, Katowice is enumerated among those 2nd and 3rd wave locations, with the biggest number of talent supply.


# posted by Michał @ 2:53 PM 0 comments

Friday, November 10, 2006

 

it's booming,

and it won't stop any soon!

Big Polish banks (well, actually it would be more accurate to say saying 'banks that operate in Poland') have made some forecast regarding residential real estate in Poland. As mortgages become more and more popular and affordable in Poland this product is gaining importance in banks' portfolio. So, they've found out that:

  1. In 2007 mortgage sales is to increase by 50% to 60%.
  2. The ratio of the total amount of mortgages to Polish GDP is only 7%, and EU's average is some 40%.
  3. Based on current income level of the households the borrowing power of Poles equals PLN 650 billion (EUR 170 billion). This is 13 times more than current debt level.
  4. Poland lacks residential real estate. Some analysts say that there is a lack of 1 million apartments, some say, that regarding poor technical conditions of existing houses, it is 8 million. Well, it's a huge demand. Assuming current level of construction, it's going to take at least 15 years to supply (In 2005 there were built only 59,700 new houses and apartments).
  5. In 2008 there can be a setback in mortgages sales because... there will be no more real estate available on the market!

Therefore, it's truly a developer's market we're now having!


# posted by Michał @ 3:58 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

 

the most underestimated location in Poland...

...is Katowice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katowice). Why?

Because, people interested in real estate in Poland, like developers, investors, analysts etc., are only looking at big cities. Big in terms of population. That's good, reasonable. With one exception...
Let's look at 10 biggest cities in Poland: Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk, Szczecin, Bydgoszcz, Lublin and Katowice. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities_in_Poland)

Katowice in only no. 10. Not so much interesting as a real estate (both residential and commercial) investment location. It only has some 320k inhabitants. Despite the fact that unemployment rate is as low as some 5%, this market is seen as to shallow.

But let's look at Katowice not as a city, but as a core of an entire urban area. The situation is quite different, as now there are more than 3,400,000 people living here. This meant that this urban area is ranked no. 8 in the entire EU! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_urban_areas_of_the_European_Union
Fore more information on 'Metropolis Katowice' go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_Katowice

I am sure that developers, investors, analysts are aware of those statistics. Therefore the reason for ignoring Katowice area has probably something to do with crowd psychology... No one wants to invest here, because no one else did. I mean the big players both Polish and international. There are only small local companies developing small residential projects and no commercial project worth mentioning (with 2 exceptions, will be mentioned later). So, my guess is that no one wants to be the first one taking the risk...

But this is going to change. Like it changed in Kraków, Wrocław or Łódz this year. And it was only a matter of nice, enthusiastic report on national weekly...

# posted by Michał @ 4:45 PM 0 comments

Monday, November 06, 2006

 

beginner's guide to Poland

for more info go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland
http://www.business.gov.pl/

for some news go to:
http://www.wbj.pl/


# posted by Michał @ 6:55 AM 0 comments
 

it's about...

it's about:


# posted by Michał @ 4:42 AM 0 comments

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?