The Lokale List
By : Andrew Chilvers
If first impressions count, Warsaw's college for real-estate management has yet to perfect the art of presentation. It may be at the forefront of an educational revolution in Poland, but its campus is stuck in the bad old days and this building has "old" written all over it.
The school is a tumbledown red-brick block straddling a main artery in the capital, and adjoined by a railway line used as a public footpath. A mangy dog dozes by the main entrance, which looks more like a back entrance. Inside, the corridors still have that gasworks-cum-correctional-facility look about them an oasis of functional concrete.
Nevertheless, this rather unseemly institute is single-handedly redefining real estate in Poland. Its task is to educate the next generation of property managers, architects, real estate agents and administrators on the vagaries of the property industry. From this industrial relic, students are learning how to deal with all aspects of property relations in the post-industrial world.
Professor Andrzej Balandynowicz, the rector of the academy, said there is an urgent need to put everyone involved in real estate through a schooling program. "In Poland, the real estate market is relatively new and we need to train the specialists," he said. "But there have been no schools to train them."
The college was started four years ago and one of its founders and financiers was the Polanowski real estate dynasty. Today, it has 1,600 fee-paying students at three campuses, which include schools in Gdansk and Bialystok. Other cities such as Krakow and Rzeszow are also hoping to cash in on the school's success by opening their own campuses.
The course structure is essentially eclectic with modules in law, economics, ecology and even sociology. Balandynowicz calls it interdisciplinarian. "It's a new kind of teaching," he said. "Each student has an education in general knowledge. For instance, a student who studies architecture has to take real estate trends into account. But the main criteria for the course is the turnover or trade in property."
The coursework is split into either full-time day students aged 19-21 or those attending evening, weekend or day-release classes. Students enrolled full time are generally financed by their parents, and the course costs zl. 3,600 per term. The part-time students are usually sponsored by their companies at zl. 2,300 a term. The academy has 100 teachers, 40 of whom are permanently employed on campus.
After graduating with honors, the students then have to take a special on-the-job, six-month training course with the government's Housing and Urban Development Office.
"The department of housing gives licenses to graduates, we don't," Balandynowicz said. "The school provides professional knowledge and the department of housing gives them the formal exam and the license once they pass and we always make sure they pass."
Balandynowicz said post-communist Poland is still changing and many of the outmoded ways of doing business are only now dying out, all the more reason for the success of schools like his.
"(Under communism), we didn't have to pay tax on property, and licenses weren't important," Balandynowicz said. "Before this school, there was no reason to get the education and training."
He said there are still agents who carry out work on buildings and get things terribly wrong.
"Often real estate agents don't understand the law concerning property and regulations," Balandynowicz said. "Just a year ago there was a scandal in Warsaw concerning a department store on ulica Marszalkowska. The appraisal was for the value of the building and not the land. Hence, the store was sold cheaply.
"There have also been scandals recently where one property was sold several times," he said. "The agent was acting on behalf of both parties."
But Balandynowicz is quick to point out that these problems are now a rarity. Standards have risen throughout the industry and across the country.
"In the past (before 1998), if you wanted to run a business you would always get permission with no problems," he said. "You could sell perfume and real estate if you wanted to. That's impossible now."
Since 1998, the government has tried to clamp down on the industry cowboys. These days no license means no access to the industry for many players and with real estate still a major issue in the country, Balandynowicz sees it as essential that everyone is educated on property dilemmas the buyers, the sellers and the agents.
"We have to learn and we have to educate," he said. "There's a great deal of confusion regarding property restitution."
Above all, Balandynowicz said it's a matter of ethics and catching up with the West. The school hopes to introduce a master's level course this year and later a postgraduate course. "This would then correspond with Western models," he said. "Each level, B.A., M.A. and postgraduate, would be responsible for different work.
"But (the school) is also concerned with ethics. We feel obliged to take (the students') responsibilities seriously."
He said the school was founded on necessity, when people were unaware of the value of real estate because of nationalization under communism. "Real estate wasn't popular," he said. "There was no private property, it simply wasn't legal. When the system changed, so did the people. They became interested in the potential of real estate. So the need for specialists in Poland right now is urgent."
