Profitable Czech property funds unsure about future

The headline for an article in Hospodarske noviny claims that it still pays to invest in real estate, but the two fund managers interviewed for the article are extremely cautious when speaking about the future. The relatively new Fond Trigea claims its investors made 6.5 percent in the last year. Its director Tomas Trcka wasn't making any promises about the future, however. "Today, it's very difficult to guess if the second wave will be the last or if the virus will become part of our life," he told HN. He said that prices for hotels and for high street retail were falling because both rely heavily on tourism. "As for funds that focus on office buildings, retail or logistics, I'm not seeing any price correction there at the moment," he said. "On the other hand, if the pandemic gets dramatically worse, there could be an impact on those sectors." HN also spoke with Peter Lukac, vice-chairman of ZFP Investments which manages a fund with more than CZK 9 billion in assets. "At the moment, future developments are a big unknown...In our experience is that in the properties owned by our fund there isn't a single request for a reduction in the amount of office space." Despite the uncertainty, he predicted that with so much cash currently out there and state bonds offering low or even negative yields, investors will increasingly choose real estate investments.