Shares in Fond Českého Bydlení rose 7.58 percent in 2019, an improvement over the 6.26 percent achieved in its first year of operations in 2018. The Czech fund that specializes in rental residential properties made five new acquisitions in 2019, raising the value of assets under management by 273 percent. Co-founder Jakub Kořínek said investors who bought shares at the beginning in 2018 will have seen an increase in their value of 11.7 percent. The results made it the sixth-best in returns among 13 Czech real estate funds for qualified investors according to an index maintained by Hospodářské noviny. The fund currently owns 7 apartment buildings in six cities.
Fund manager David Fogad says that even as the fund was being set up in 2018, many economists were predicting that a crisis was coming. “So our fund has long-term calculations for different scenarios for the development of the economy and we’re able to adapt quickly and take advantage of opportunities that the crisis will offer,” he said. “As a result of the crisis, attractive assets could come to market whose owners hadn’t originally thought about selling and the potential fall in real estate prices opens the way for advantageous acquisitions.”
