A new Irish-led property platform has set its sights on the fledgling Polish private rental sector (PRS) market, at a time when the Republic’s rental market is in a state of flux amid a fresh round of planned reforms.
Dublin-based Bartek Real Estate, backed by a board of senior Irish legal, real estate and investment figures including Niall Molloy, founder of data centres operator Echelon and David Dillon, cofounder of law firm Dillon Eustace, is seeking to raise up to €40 million of initial equity.
The firm, where Irish veteran investor in Polish property, William Gleeson, is also board member and whose son, Conor Gleeson, is a cofounder, said it is working on an initial development project of 133 apartments in Lodz, a city about 140km southwest of Warsaw. It is assessing more than 50 project opportunities.
Bartek also plans to raise debt to deploy alongside equity on developments. It will work in partnership with Polish developer OPG Property Professionals, where William Gleeson is founder and chairman. Bartek has a build-and-hold strategy.
“Poland is at an inflection point – with strong rental demand, a housing shortfall of over 1.5 million units, and a nascent PRS market ready for institutionalisation,” said Conor Gleeson, who previously worked with accountancy group Azets Ireland and private equity firm Renatus. “This is a chance to be early and smart.”
Poland, which has a population of about 38 million and has been one of the fastest-growing economies in the European Union in recent years, currently only has 0.1 per cent of housing stock in the hands of institutional PRS investors, according to Bartek. Savills estimates that institutional PRS accounts for about a fifth of Dublin’s 125,000 stock of rental units.
PwC estimated in a recent overview of the Polish PRS market that institutional rental stock grew by 32 per cent in the last year alone to about 20,000 units. It forecasts the market to quadruple from this to over 80,000 units by 2028.
According to Eurostat data, Poland has an overcrowding rate – where homes lack enough rooms for the number of people in the household – of nearly 37 per cent, compared with the EU average of 17.5 per cent. Much of the housing stock is communist-era flats, often prefabricated, that are badly in need of modernisation.
Unlike Ireland and a number of other European markets, Poland does not have legal limits on rent increases.
Will rent reform make building apartments viable?
Following a wave of PRS investment in the Irish market between 2016 and 2022, led by international investors, development has fallen dramatically as a result of a spike in interest rates and tightening of rent controls during the pandemic in rent pressure zones (RPZ), according to industry observers.
Currently, rent increases in RPZ areas cannot be greater than the rate of inflation or 2 per cent – whichever is lower.
Under the planned new national rent control system announced this week – which is set to fully kick in from March 2026 – rent increases for tenancies would be capped in most cases by inflation or a maximum cap of 2 per cent similar to the current RPZ system.
However, rent control for new apartment blocks would be tied to inflation even when this exceeds 2 per cent as part of efforts to encourage their construction.
A number of property figures have said that the planned new measures will not boost development.
