Polish population statistics can give misleading information to potential investors, CBRE’s Michael Atwell warned delegates at PropertyEU's CEE Investment Briefing held in London on Thursday.
Polish population statistics can give misleading information to potential investors, CBRE’s Michael Atwell warned delegates at PropertyEU's CEE Investment Briefing held in London on Thursday.
´Most people are registered in their home towns, but they work in Warsaw or Wroclaw or Krakow,´ Atwell, CBRE's head of CEE capital markets, told the briefing.
Residents tend to stay registered in their home towns for convenience, lower insurance and sometimes lower taxes, he said.
´The official statistics show high populations in some of these small towns, and actually, they’re not there. Either they’re working in big cities or in the UK or Germany. So demographics are key, but don’t rely on official statistics. Go on turnover, performance, rent-to-sale.´
Atwell and other panel members remained positive about Polish retail, however, while cautioning on oversupply.
'If you look into smaller centres, like Lubin, you see there was a dominant centre over the last five years, but now there are one or two dominant centres,' said Martin Erbe of Germany's Helaba Landesbank Hesse-Thuringia. 'Look at Poznan, which if you ask me is one of the most oversupplied cities in Poland for retail, and has more to come.'