Lawyers hold forth
Now, their work in this market is perhaps the most intensely competitive of them all. For a number of practices in Warsaw, this sector currently takes up the majority of their briefs and such is the rivalry between them, that plenty of lawyers now talk the hard sell as aggressively as agents.
"I've observed in the past two years that a lot of law firms have started to get into real estate," says Andrzej Chelowski of Miller Canfield, "the property market has not experienced so steep a downturn as, for example, the financial services market, and the current rebound in the commercial property sector has attracted the attention of other law firms who historically have not specialized in property law."
He adds that his firm has been handling property cases for the past seven years and that they now make up about eighty percent of its work.
"Chambers [Chambers & Partners, the international legal publishers] didn't even rate real estate attorneys in Poland until two years ago," confirms Eric Rosedale, who along with Evan Lazar, recently joined Salans, from Weil Gotshal & Manges, to lead its Global Real Estate and Property Finance practice. "It wasn't even on the map as a specialized practice area," he says, "but now everyone is claiming to be a property lawyer because it's a hot specialty."
Real estate lawyers have, until now, largely remained hidden from the attentions of the property press, narrow as its focus tends to be anyway. They're asked to contribute articles every once in a while, during which they'll painstakingly attempt to describe a piece of legislation trudging its way through the Sejm which, to be frank, hardly makes for entertaining reading. The impression often given is that lawyers in Poland spend most of their time nose-deep in heavy legal tracts and wouldn't know an original thought if it stood up in court. The truth is, however, that they all express very different views of where the market is going and can do so eloquently, in true attorney style.
That Poland's entry to the EU will ultimately have beneficial effects on the country's economy, and hence the real estate market, has become a mantra for anyone called upon to comment on the matter. To what degree it will is quite another issue, however, certainly for the lawyers Lokale Immobilia talked to.
"While I think EU accession over time will support and give a strong underpinning for growth in all sectors of the real estate market," says Eric Rosedale, "a) it's not a panacea and, b) in my view, in the short term it's not as important as other world wide macro-economic factors that have little or nothing to do with Poland's accession to the EU."
The strength of the U.S. economy, that of Germany and particularly, it would seem from his remarks, that of Russia, are going to play a more immediate role in the fortunes or otherwise of the Polish market in the months and years to come. "U.S. institutional funds like European real estate right now," he says, adding that, "many have dipped their hands into the Central European market and have been successful, which means there's more to come, which is good news." The Germans, as neighbors will also, in his opinion, have a "massive" impact but it's when he gets onto Poland's precarious position in relation to Russia, that he becomes most vocal.
"I just got back from four days in Moscow," he recounts, "and this morning I had breakfast in a hotel in Warsaw." Allowing for the fact that the hotel market in Poland's capital is saturated, he still goes on to contrast fortunes in the two cities: "In Moscow at breakfast, you couldn't get a table, in Warsaw, the place was nearly empty." Around him in the Russian capital were, "people known as major institutional players speaking a cornucopia of languages with a real sense of excitement in the air."
His point is that while Russia might not be as transparent as Poland, and is riskier, it's also true that, "a lot of institutional investors are driven by returns - they need a certain return profile to justify investment - and the return profile of Poland has changed somewhat and has begun to look more like other EU countries, which might make it harder to substantially increase foreign direct investment." Of this country's new, supposedly more elevated, status, he adds, "over a relatively short period of time, Poland will need to compete with the pan-European investment basket, containing [established EU countries] for better... and for worse."
Paweł Dębowski of CMS Cameron McKenna, doesn't quite go along with Rosedale. He accepts that "developers will go over" to Russia but that the big financial institutions are more likely to start any investment in the region in Poland and not be "skipped over", as the Salans' lawyer puts it. Poland's greater transparency and stability, are bound to find in its favour, he feels. Of those investors, he says: "If they can do something more safely, they probably will. Am I concerned? [about competition from the east] Yes, I probably am, but I think that the safety factor will still keep us first in line and we are bigger than the Czech Republic, Hungary and the Baltic States."
The Miller Canfield camp believes that Poland's entry to the EU will genuinely have a marked, positive impact on the market here and that the comparative prosperity Warsaw has enjoyed will ultimately, from May 1st 2004 onwards, spread more equally throughout the regions.
"I think the most important development in the Polish market will be a new relationship between Warsaw and the other big cities," says Konrad Marciniuk, one of the lawyers on the Miller Canfield team. He recognizes that at the moment, some planned developments in the regions, involving large-scale regeneration, have little chance of getting off the ground because of weak demand in the area. But, "as the economy becomes stronger," after EU accession, "these projects will become more plausible." Used to thinking big in Warsaw, the argument goes, developers will soon gain the confidence to do likewise in cities like Szczecin and Gdańsk, giving them less of an incentive to venture further east to Russia.
Real estate lawyers, now something of a crowd, have helped to make Poland an easier place to make transactions in, even if their prose has sometimes been harder to negotiate. When they talk, however, they show that while transparency can be a godsend, it can also make things seem simpler than they are. Poland's EU accession hasn't put any arguments to bed, even among that most redoubtable of professions, the legal one.
"I've observed in the past two years that a lot of law firms have started to get into real estate," says Andrzej Chelowski of Miller Canfield, "the property market has not experienced so steep a downturn as, for example, the financial services market, and the current rebound in the commercial property sector has attracted the attention of other law firms who historically have not specialized in property law."
He adds that his firm has been handling property cases for the past seven years and that they now make up about eighty percent of its work.
"Chambers [Chambers & Partners, the international legal publishers] didn't even rate real estate attorneys in Poland until two years ago," confirms Eric Rosedale, who along with Evan Lazar, recently joined Salans, from Weil Gotshal & Manges, to lead its Global Real Estate and Property Finance practice. "It wasn't even on the map as a specialized practice area," he says, "but now everyone is claiming to be a property lawyer because it's a hot specialty."
Real estate lawyers have, until now, largely remained hidden from the attentions of the property press, narrow as its focus tends to be anyway. They're asked to contribute articles every once in a while, during which they'll painstakingly attempt to describe a piece of legislation trudging its way through the Sejm which, to be frank, hardly makes for entertaining reading. The impression often given is that lawyers in Poland spend most of their time nose-deep in heavy legal tracts and wouldn't know an original thought if it stood up in court. The truth is, however, that they all express very different views of where the market is going and can do so eloquently, in true attorney style.
That Poland's entry to the EU will ultimately have beneficial effects on the country's economy, and hence the real estate market, has become a mantra for anyone called upon to comment on the matter. To what degree it will is quite another issue, however, certainly for the lawyers Lokale Immobilia talked to.
"While I think EU accession over time will support and give a strong underpinning for growth in all sectors of the real estate market," says Eric Rosedale, "a) it's not a panacea and, b) in my view, in the short term it's not as important as other world wide macro-economic factors that have little or nothing to do with Poland's accession to the EU."
The strength of the U.S. economy, that of Germany and particularly, it would seem from his remarks, that of Russia, are going to play a more immediate role in the fortunes or otherwise of the Polish market in the months and years to come. "U.S. institutional funds like European real estate right now," he says, adding that, "many have dipped their hands into the Central European market and have been successful, which means there's more to come, which is good news." The Germans, as neighbors will also, in his opinion, have a "massive" impact but it's when he gets onto Poland's precarious position in relation to Russia, that he becomes most vocal.
"I just got back from four days in Moscow," he recounts, "and this morning I had breakfast in a hotel in Warsaw." Allowing for the fact that the hotel market in Poland's capital is saturated, he still goes on to contrast fortunes in the two cities: "In Moscow at breakfast, you couldn't get a table, in Warsaw, the place was nearly empty." Around him in the Russian capital were, "people known as major institutional players speaking a cornucopia of languages with a real sense of excitement in the air."
His point is that while Russia might not be as transparent as Poland, and is riskier, it's also true that, "a lot of institutional investors are driven by returns - they need a certain return profile to justify investment - and the return profile of Poland has changed somewhat and has begun to look more like other EU countries, which might make it harder to substantially increase foreign direct investment." Of this country's new, supposedly more elevated, status, he adds, "over a relatively short period of time, Poland will need to compete with the pan-European investment basket, containing [established EU countries] for better... and for worse."
Paweł Dębowski of CMS Cameron McKenna, doesn't quite go along with Rosedale. He accepts that "developers will go over" to Russia but that the big financial institutions are more likely to start any investment in the region in Poland and not be "skipped over", as the Salans' lawyer puts it. Poland's greater transparency and stability, are bound to find in its favour, he feels. Of those investors, he says: "If they can do something more safely, they probably will. Am I concerned? [about competition from the east] Yes, I probably am, but I think that the safety factor will still keep us first in line and we are bigger than the Czech Republic, Hungary and the Baltic States."
The Miller Canfield camp believes that Poland's entry to the EU will genuinely have a marked, positive impact on the market here and that the comparative prosperity Warsaw has enjoyed will ultimately, from May 1st 2004 onwards, spread more equally throughout the regions.
"I think the most important development in the Polish market will be a new relationship between Warsaw and the other big cities," says Konrad Marciniuk, one of the lawyers on the Miller Canfield team. He recognizes that at the moment, some planned developments in the regions, involving large-scale regeneration, have little chance of getting off the ground because of weak demand in the area. But, "as the economy becomes stronger," after EU accession, "these projects will become more plausible." Used to thinking big in Warsaw, the argument goes, developers will soon gain the confidence to do likewise in cities like Szczecin and Gdańsk, giving them less of an incentive to venture further east to Russia.
Real estate lawyers, now something of a crowd, have helped to make Poland an easier place to make transactions in, even if their prose has sometimes been harder to negotiate. When they talk, however, they show that while transparency can be a godsend, it can also make things seem simpler than they are. Poland's EU accession hasn't put any arguments to bed, even among that most redoubtable of professions, the legal one.
