A bird’s eye view

In the final showdown with Colliers International, it was Knight Frank that eventually came out on top. The prize was a contract for the management of a commercial area of over 190,000 sqm, which is managed by German fund Deka Immobilien acting for several open-ended real estate funds, in one of the biggest property management tenders of the last few years. “The investor invited all the agencies to participate in the tender when it was announced, as long ago as December 2009. For us it meant months of hard work and preparing documentation. Eventually our offer went head-to-head with the proposal of our colleagues at Colliers International,” explains Bartłomiej Łepkowski, head of property management at Knight Frank. The team he led has previous experience of managing this company’s real estate. The cooperation started in 2005 with Deka Immobilien’s first purchases in the country, when it bought an office building housing the headquarters of Kredyt Bank on ul. Kasprzaka in Warsaw, as well as the neighbouring Victoria building. “Did this association give us an advantage? It may seem that way, but we knew that the ordering party was considering the bids dispassionately and would choose the best offer regardless of sentiment. The Polish tender is only a part of a broader plan which is being implemented worldwide, according to which a maximum of two property managers, depending on the portfolio size, is  selected for every country,” explains Bartłomiej Łepkowski. The contract came into force in July, and its scope is wider than earlier contracts with this client, which only covered  property management services. From now on Knight Frank’s property managers will carry out complex supervision of the property portfolio, including increasing its value, negotiations and renegotiations of contracts with tenants, and supervision of the interior finishing carried out by tenants.
From the sea to the mountains
There are currently eleven facilities in the portfolio of Polish properties managed by Knight Frank, including the four-star Andel’s hotel in Kraków, Tesco Distribution Centre in Teresin, Andersia Tower in Poznań and eight office buildings (in the capital, one in Gdańsk and Bema Plaza in Wrocław). In the next few months the agency is to take under its wing another two Warsaw office buildings currently managed by other firms.  “It is true that we specialise in office facility management – offices constitute 90 pct of our portfolio. However, this does not mean that we cannot supervise hotel operations. I can assure you that we have experience in warehouse facility management. We have had a number of such properties in our portfolio in the past, including Centrum Logistyczne Ożarów,” stresses the representative of Knight Frank in Poland, which manages a total area of nearly 1 mln sqm.
No resting on our laurels
Winning a tender is only the first step. The next stage is to satisfy the expectations of the property owner. “We need to take a bird’s eye view with regard to the whole property portfolio so that we can see all of its strong and weak points and improve on the latter. Talking to tenants, negotiating and renegotiating contracts, but also looking after the technical condition of the buildings, and improving them in a way that makes tenants happy and encourages them to stay in them for as long as possible – this is our mission,” concludes Mr Łepkowski.