ThePrime Pod: Recent Episodes
Robert McLean
News, interviews and trends from Central Europe's commercial real estate and proptech sectors. Produced by Robert McLean, publisher of ThePrime.cz
Did you know that December 3 is an International Day of Persons with Disabilities? ♿ More than 1.15 million Czechs over the age of 15 have some form of disability or challenge that limits their everyday lives.
I spoke about the issue with Tamas Méri, Co-founder and Business Development Director of Access4you, and Tewfik Sabongui, Managing Partner of Colliers Czech Republic. The episode shares numerous insights and best practices for integrating these aspects into business strategy and operations.
More important than any other question for 2023 is where inflation will be at the end of it. Having peaked at 18%, CPI has fallen to 11% with further reductions likely. But what will it take to convince central bankers to reduce interest rates?
Michal Stupavsky (Conseq) believes inflation got out of control in the first place because the CNB moved too little, too late in hiking interest rates. Mark Robinson (Encor Wealth Management) describes 2022 as an "earthquake" that will have a long-term impact on the region's economies. Unlike the optimists, he argues that it simply takes a long time to clear the system of all the excess money sloshing around that's accelerating price growth.
What do you get when you combine falling real estate valuations with higher interest rates and lower LTV in an inflationary environment? You get a commercial property market where big transactions are scarce, and brokers don't know what price to list assets at.
Savills' MD in Prague Stuart Jordan says deal flow will remain slow not because of psychology -- but because the math simply doesn't work for most investors. The deals that are happening, he says, are driven by investors who know exactly what they're looking for.
Iain Fanthorpe (Bluehouse Capital) insists that property investments aren't just designed to protect against inflation...they deliver. That was true during the last decade when inflation lay dormant. But he says it will continue to do so even in today's challenging environment. Bluehouse is a value-add real estate investor focusing on Central and Eastern Europe. ""With our assets," says Fanthorpe, "if we take a bottom up approach during our investment cycle, we feel that we can manage the process through the whole period until the environment is a little bit better."
The destructive tornado that wrecked four southern Moravian villages and hundreds of homes on June 24, 2021 unleashed a wave of solidarity from across the Czech Republic. Among those who felt a duty to contribute to the rebuilding was the Portuguese architect Marco Maio. He encouraged the villages to treat the catastrophe as an opportunity to re-imagine some of their public spaces. And as a professor of architecture at ČVUT's construction faculty in Prague, he created a real-life assignment for his students.
The fourth edition of the Czech https://www.kfbrownfieldy.cz/ (Brownfields conference) is nearly upon us. On June 16, investors, builders, banks and public officials will converge on Ostrava for two days of discussions and planning. On this edition of ThePrime Pod, Tomáš Kadeřábek (Association of Developers) says there's been plenty of theoretical talk at this point about brownfields. Now, it's time to talk about making real progress. The other guest on this edition of the podcast is David Petr (CzechInvest). He's excited by opportunity to bring such a powerful group of people together to discuss this critical components of the country's sustainability program. Those who listen to the end will get information about a potential discount to attend the exciting conference. ThePrime is a media partner of this year's conference.
Nick Cotton had lived in Kyiv for more than 20 years by the time Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February. This is the story of how the head of Cushman & Wakefield Ukraine found himself fleeing an advancing army -- what led up to it, how he made the painful decision to leave, and the exhausting trip itself.
This was a genuine conversation with Clare Sheils, MD of CBRE's Prague office. And we were in one of the few available meetings rooms in the company's office on Nam. Republiky, not in some sound-proof studio. This will always be my default for ThePrime Pod, as I'm very much in favor of meeting people where they work. But it means you can hear the occasional phone going off, or doors closing across the hallway. The important thing, however, was the quality of the conversation. Sheils spoke candidly and insightfully about her experience of guiding the company through the Covid-19 pandemic. And she didn't get tripped up by a trickier question at the end about the role of valuation in such unprecedented conditions. Her main point when it comes to the workplace is that companies and their leaders will have to get used to a changed environment. That there's no going back to the old ways entirely, and that new methods of communication will be vital in creating and maintaining company moral and corporate culture. ThePrime Pod is driven by https://my.captivate.fm/ThePrime.cz (ThePrime.cz) website, which focuses on real estate, urban planning, sustainability and proptech in Central Europe.
Deep sustainable know-how is now a competitive advantage for developers, says Pavel Sovicka of Panattoni, on the debut episode of ThePrime Pod. Sovicka says his tenants have become masters of low-energy production. But they now demand the same level of sophistication from the buildings they occupy. It’s a fascinating look behind the headlines at Panattoni’s plans to implement solar energy solutions and materials recycling when working on brownfield sites. ThePrime Pod is driven by ThePrime.cz website, which focuses on real estate, urban planning, sustainability and proptech in Central Europe.
It's finally here! I've been promising to launch ThePrime Pod for a few months now, so I've finally taken the plunge and gotten things set up. Subscribe to make sure you're up to date with the only podcast to delve deep into the Czech & Slovak real estate sectors, the growing proptech industry and local urban planning. I'll be covering the wider CEE markets as well to provide context on what's going on here, but also with a view to domestic investors heading abroad in search of assets..