Wednesday, November 08, 2006
the most underestimated location in Poland...
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...
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...
