A noticeable trend in the commercial real estate market over the past two years has been the growth of properties transferred by owners to professional management.
With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the situation in the recently stable and predictable commercial real estate market has changed dramatically.
Many owners faced such recession factors as lower rental rates, loss of occupancy, noticeable outflow of customers, increased supply competition and, as a result, reduced business profitability.
In a number of cases, the owners were faced with the need to sell an object or change its functional purpose.
Taking into account these trends, the role of professional management companies has noticeably increased.
According to Vyacheslav Rozhmanov, CEO of R2 Asset Management, today the market often requires radical changes in the business model from investors and owners of commercial real estate, respectively, the risks increase significantly.
At the same time, despite the complexity of the situation, investors have not changed their views on the commercial real estate segment as a potential source of income, they are ready to invest in these assets. But it is professional companies that they want to see “at the helm” as managers.
In 2020, gross revenue from facilities managed by R2 amounted to 950 million rubles, the total value of assets reached 6 billion rubles. In total, over 275,000 sq. m. of commercial real estate in Moscow, the Moscow region, St. Petersburg, the Leningrad region, the Volga region are under management. At the same time, the geography of the company’s presence is constantly expanding.
The partners of the company are both private owners of large capital and institutional investors, professional players in the real estate market.
It is also important that a number of new economic levers appeared last year, connected, first of all, with various types of state support. This, in particular, the deferral from the payment of tax on the property of the organization and advance payments, land tax, etc. All this must also be taken into account and wisely used to increase profitability.
Another significant market trend is the growing role of modern information technologies for analysis, forecasting and decision support. And this is traditionally the strength of management companies that invest in the informatization of their business. “In the new market, the profitability of investments in real estate is increasingly determined not so much by the characteristics of the object itself, but by the understanding of trends, as well as the availability and competent use of tools for increasing capitalization and making a profit from this object. And this trend is likely to become more and more in demand,” – sums up Vyacheslav Rozhmanov.
