The real estate market is changing at an amazing pace. Many trends can be accurately predicted - just like the increase in sales prices or the growing importance of the lease in relation to sales - but every day in the industry is full of challenges, and each transaction requires a different approach. That's why our work brings us so much satisfaction. In 2018 we had many reasons to celebrate. We invite you to review the most important moments of the past year from Hamilton May’s perspective and to the preview of what is there for 2019.
Maintaining the framework and consistency of the past 2 years where we have focused on five key areas of success:
- Revenue Growth
- Milestone Sales
- International Brand
- Private Rented Sector
- Our Team
REVENUE GROWTH
Growth indicated company’s health and the ability “not only to survive but thrive” (to quote the American poet).
Revenue Growth has maintained its impressive trajectory. Krakow has increased by 22% with Warsaw which now represents a more mature office increasing by 41%. The vast majority of this growth has come from the existing team demonstrating their continued progress. Our target for next year is more ambitious as it will (hopefully) be on the back of a new office in Krakow – more below – and an office at capacity in Warsaw.
This year we have witnessed some record-breaking deals, such as a sale of a beautiful mansion close to Warsaw for 8 M PLN or a multi-unit sale in a discreet modern building in Krakow, having all the sold units listed as rental and managed by our property management team, we hope to repeat and surpass these achievements. As the saying goes – the appetite comes with eating – and we are still hungry.
MILESTONE SALES
The two ‘significant multi-unit transactions’ we mentioned at the end of 2017 indeed came to fruition. One on Rakowicka in Krakow and the other on Skawinska in Kazimierz represented a significant step forward for us as we continue to expand our primary market activities. Furthermore, we assisted in closing the sale of a boutique residential building on Zamoyskiego in Podgorze, and are currently discussing the exclusive sale of another boutique residential building on the fringes of the Old Town in Krakow.
Warsaw has seen greater focus on the secondary market where we achieved 2 record breaking transactions each larger than the preceding one with a third expected to complete in early 2019. Across both offices we have assisted a number of developers on the primary market with individual sales and look forward to continuing doing more over the coming year.
Of note we are currently entering the fray of commercial assets and hope to announce the sale of a commercial building in the centre of Warsaw soon – stay tuned!
INTERNATIONAL BRAND
This has been one of the most successful and rewarding aspects of the past year. Our cooperation with increasing numbers of foreign investors has been the driving force behind many of the good news stories in 2018. Working with Dutch, Israeli, Spanish and other investors has been a highly stimulating challenge which we look forward to repeating come the New Year.
Another aspect is the Hamilton May Consulate Service, a dedicated service for embassy employees and diplomatic staff, that has been introduced a couple of years ago and it continues to bring great results for our most demanding clients. We helped numerous diplomatic staff members from all around the world to find their new home in Warsaw and Krakow.
We constantly work to make our agents more accessible by building a strong and consistent brand, exploring both proven and modern ways to bring exposure and communicate with clients and being present on the most important property events. Hamilton May became mature and entrusted brand on the Polish real estate market.
PRIVATE RENTED SECTOR
PRS has been a major focus these past few years and is starting to bear fruit. We were involved in the leasing and/or management of smaller scale schemes of 5-25 units in Krakow and Warsaw in buildings across Barska; Skawinska; Miodowa (Krakow) and Wola Libre; Zlota, Pereca, InCity & others (Warsaw). We expect to add scale and depth to these services in 2019 and continue on the path to partnering with new and existing funds as the Private Rented Sector continues to gather pace in Poland.
We have also enjoyed advising such investment funds – both formally and informally – on good practice within the Polish residential market as a result of our 15 years experience in property and are preparing further projects for the coming months.
OUR TEAM
This could be first but we like saving the best for last and that is focused on our team across Krakow and Warsaw. We exceeded 50 which represents a small but significant milestone and expect to finish 2019 with c.70 property professionals. By consistently adding experienced, hard working and positive individuals to our existing team we have maintained the balance between being able to assist more clients, with greater depth of services and at the same time ensuring our quality and care of (almost) each and every client did not drop. In the rare instances where we have not been able to live up to our high standards we have always tried our very best to make things up – where we have been permitted.
Our recruitment strategies, employee retention policies and career development paths has been covered in ESTATE magazine, making Hamilton May team a benchmark for the industry. We continue to be one of the few real estate agencies in Poland maintaining incomparably low turn-over rate thanks to providing our team members with clear and ambitious career goals and opportunities and our motivating yet supporting atmosphere.
Finally, we would like to thank all our clients who have trusted us this past year with something as important as their real estate needs.
FUTURE
We have lofty plans for 2019 which include the opening of a new flagship office in Krakow which will enable us to expand from the current c.30 professionals to almost 50; and bringing our Warsaw office to capacity from the current 20 to just shy of 30. We will be going live with our new and enhanced CMS in Q1 2019 which has been in the offing the past 18 months as we seek to utilise technology to help us help our clients even more. This is thanks to our talented and quite frankly genius IT team without whom we would still be using pen and paper.
CONCLUSION
A massive thank you to all the hard working agents, assistants, photographers, marketing and PR professionals, IT ninjas, our office administrators who glue things together and the property management team. Without you all we would have nothing to say in this end of year summary and it would just be full of real estate pictures and memes :)
