Beating the cycle

I didn’t know why until I met one of the other roommates. The room was located on the fourth floor, whereas the shower rooms were in the basement, and the roommate didn’t like going up and down the stairs all the time. So you should be able to figure out the need for the open windows. This is but one of the vivid memories I have of the student hall where my boyfriend lived. I think almost everyone must have similarly grim or bizarre recollections of when they lived in or visited student halls a few decades ago. But what a contrast they were to the ones being built today! Professional players are now building them, while investors are queuing up to buy the gleaming, finished product. In this month’s article ‘Digging those Digs’, the experts make the point that student halls are an acyclic product that can be relied on even during a major downturn, because this is when universities are even more inundated by students than during an economic boom. This is perhaps why US developer Golub & Company has taken such a keen interest in this segment in Poland. In an interview in this issue (‘Focusing on the People’), the company’s president, Michael Newman, tells us what sparked their enthusiasm not just for student halls but also rental apartments, as well as how important it is to focus on people – on their requirements, and therefore how important it is to base our property market activities on services. Since we’re on the subject of acyclic phenomena – and I hope you agree with me on this – forming relationships with great co-workers is also something that isn’t dictated by the economic cycle. Therefore I highly recommend this month’s Endpiece column, in which our dear colleague Aneta Cichla says a fond farewell to us at Eurobuild and to you, our readers.