His Excellency Mr. W. Robert Kohorst, Ambassador of the United States to the Republic of Croatia officially opened the 2018 edition of ZagRE, a traditional property event featuring over 20 panels with a focus on real estate in the CEE and SEE regions, attracting over 100 speakers and 600 participants from the European Union, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and South Africa.
Attila Kovács held his keynote speech in this session, setting the right tone for the event from the very beginning. With a main emphasis on heritage restoration and redevelopment, but also touching on modern architecture, sustainability and well-being, he shared the development stories of Eiffel Palace, Váci 1 and Szervita Square Building with his audience. Visuals of the landmark projects included archive floorplans, sections and photos, as well as movies showing the complete development process, and a great selection from recent photoshoots. After the extremely well-received session that generated excellent questions and a cross-regional dialogue during the event, Mr. Kovács had further opportunities in the Budapest panel to share his professional credo as a Hungarian architect and businessman.
Featuring special invitees Szilvia Bősze (Director for Business Development, Paulinyi-Reith & Partners Inc.), Balázs Jelinek (Deputy CEO, Liget Budapest), Attila Kovács MRICS (Managing Partner, Horizon Development), Dr. Mihály Schrancz (Development Director, Property Market Real Estate Development), and moderated by Gábor Borbély MRICS (Head of Research and Business Development, CBRE), the Budapest panel took both a synchronic and diachronic approach to introduce the Hungarian development market of the last decade. After a thorough, macroeconomic analysis comparing the differing drivers, characteristics, tendencies and realities of the CEE countries, the panelists tackled various questions and issues of the building industry prior to, during and after the economic crisis; shared their personal stories from all three periods; and compared learnings from ongoing benchmark projects representing the private and public sectors. They also posed the quasi-philosophical question of ‘How to measure success in real estate’, and provided a wide variety of answers, listing quantitative and qualitative measures, key performance indicators, as well as the development’s short-, medium- and long-term impact on the physical, social and natural environment, and the urban landscape as a whole. Regardless of their scale, strategy, business model or stakeholder structure, all these best-in-class projects will definitely earn the acknowledgement of the Hungarian and regional real estate communities.
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