Is Sales & Leasing Cold In These Days?

📢 Webinar 💻 /Podcast 🎙 with Marian Škvarek and Realpad.

💡  The “Real Estate Better” is our webinar/podcast series featured by PropTech Slovakia and its partners from Slovakia and abroad.  Each episode is devoted to actual real estate challenges and we share tips, solutions and experiences on how to solve them: this episode was focused on our first challenge as well: 🔦 “SALES & LEASING in 2023”.

Milan Bogár, our founder and host of the webinar/podcast from PropTech Slovakia was discussing this topic with Marian Škvarek, CEO and founder of Realpad. Realpad is the leading provider of Sales and Leasing SW solutions for Real estate developers (especially residential, but also some commercial) that we know from more than 10 countries. We were very happy that Marian accepted our invitation because, thanks to him we could have got information from more than 10 national markets, and become those lucky ones that could knew him and his more profound views better.
Links to our podcast and webinar  from 8 March 2023  on www.youtube.com:

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Couple of our highlighs from the webinar/podcast with Marian:

“I got advice from one of my friends like you as a founder or CEO,  you are the only person in the company who really cannot afford to burn out. Because if you burn out in the company, the whole company burns with you. So I’m doing my best not to do that.”

“… there was no good solutions on the market. You know, you either spend a lot of money and time or you just do things manually, which means errors, which means frustrated people, which means eroding trust of your buyers. So that’s how the idea of Realpad was born somewhere around 2014. And basically, since then, we are just trying to solve more and more problems for our customers and obviously grow the customer base as much as possible.”

“I would say also like Realpad serves as something where you show your talent. Listen, we want you to focus on our buyers. We want you to focus on the business. And we are not the type of company that employs you to spend 20 percent of your time doing the administration and manual reporting.”

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Time stamps/chapters

on youtube  for more direct access to information you wish to get:

00:00 Intro

01:46 How do you relax?

04:42 How the idea of improving sales and leasing process in Real Estate with Realpad was born.

08:03 Where are we the best.

09:51 Where customers welcome our help the most.

13:20 Views from more countries: Dubai, Serbia, Finland, Poland, US, Europe.

15:40 Where the needs of developers and buyers are shifting.

19:08 What developers need to stay successful in a long run.

20:06 Helping both developers and real estate agencies.

21:31 Commercial Real Estate needs help as well.

25:25 Practical examples and experiences with adding value in particular cases.

31:07 Very good experience of Realpad with Corwin.

31:47 Plans for 2023, MIPIM, etc.

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Complete Transcription

(Dear visitor, this is complete transcription of our webinar and podcast made by an AI Whisper. Whisper is very good, but not perfect and we dared to make just a very quick human supervision of its work. Anyway, if you find some gaps, errors, etc. do not let them disturb you. You can freely contact us or any of our podcast participants via LI profiles, should you wish corrections or further explanations)

00:00 Intro
Milan: So, good morning, everyone. This is “Real Estate Better”, or in Slovak, “Nehnuteľnosti lepšie”, you watch and listen to our podcast featured together by PropTech Slovakia and its partners either in Slovakia or abroad from all over the world.
Each episode we devote to actual real estate challenges and we share tips, solutions and experiences on how to solve them.
This episode, we would like to focus on sales and leasing in the residential sector. This week in the residential sector.
Why leasing and sales? Because the economic situation in each country is very difficult.
There are very high inflations, prices of energy are very unstable and sales and leasing, especially of flats and family houses, is slowed down significantly all over the Europe somehow, but not in every country in the same way.
And today it’s a really big honor for me to speak with one founder of Realpad, which is a leading provider of sales and leasing solutions for especially residential developers. They have very interesting international reach. They are present in more than 10 countries at the moment.
It’s Marian Skvarek. Hi, Marian!.
Marian: Hi! Thank you for having me!

01:46 How do you relax?
Milan: Thank you as well! I would like to start with one icebreaker question at the beginning. I know that you are a CEO. You are very busy each day, and I’m interested in how do you relax and how often can you afford this kind of relaxation?
Marian: Well, I definitely do relax. Maybe I haven’t relaxed so much in the first years of the company, but since the team has grown, it’s more about the team and the people we have on the team. And I cannot just compensate for that working 20 hours a day. So actually, I went for skiing with my friends last weekend, so it was fun. And in general, I would say I believe in something called work life integration. So I would say that I actually relax every day and I’m definitely enjoying the flexibility connected with the entrepreneurship. So, you know, like I have kids, so definitely a large part of my spare time is spent with them. At the same time, you know, I try to spend time with my friends.
I like sports and so on. So I definitely I definitely try to find time for that. You know, like I got advice from one of my friends like you as a as a founder or CEO, you are the you are the only person in the company who really cannot afford to burn out. Because if you burn out in the company, the whole company burns with you. So I’m doing my best not to do that.

Milan: This is nice. I was skiing as well this weekend with kids. So where have you been?
Marian: Austria, as always, my favorite one.
Milan: Your favorite one. I was in High Tatras. It was not so bad as in previous years, but kind of, I would say, a awakening business here. It’s more and more, it is every time better and better. And I’m surprised how good services people can offer here, because I was not used to it.
Marian: That’s good, because I was born maybe one hour drive from High Tatras and I haven’t been there for quite some time. So I think it’s time to fix this.
Milan: One hour? Oh, where exactly?
Marian: Yeah, I was born in Eastern Slovakia, you know, in the town of Prešov.
Milan: You are from Prešov. Nice! I thought that you are from Bratislava, but OK, nice to know.
Marian: So my accent is not that terrible anymore.

04:42 How the idea of improving sales and leasing process in Real Estate was born.
Milan: Yeah, I think that we can jump straight to the topic.
I know that RealPad is really good with these solutions. A lot of developers are very happy with your solutions and they are implementing it. And I heard it even from people who are not so tech savvy. Yeah, it’s really simplifying their life and helping them. How did you come with this idea to make it better and to work it?
Marian: Well, I would say, you know, I don’t want this to sound too humble, but it was no genius idea. It was more a combination of hard work and luck. And what I mean by luck was that, you know, in the beginning, I was starting as a technology freelancer. I was basically coding applications for anyone who, actually, needed one. And at one point I was approached by a real estate developer and I started developing this idea of my own. You know, some tablet application that could help them present their portfolio of projects to their buyers. So basically, the idea was to replace paper catalogues with an iPad application, which was quite a new thing back then.
However, I was lucky enough to meet a developer who directed me to the right point. They said, like, listen, this is nice to have. At the same time, we have some problems that are really a big pain for us and it’s not easy to solve them. And that’s how I came across this problem that, basically, sales of newly built real estate is the most complex transaction in our lives very often. You know, like there are super complicated transaction between companies. But you as a consumer, as a buyer, you usually there is nothing you would spend more than a year basically transacting or buying or something where so many people would be involved, you know. And as a result, I found out that any any residential real estate developer who wants to provide better service, digital service and instant and fast and transparent communication, basically they have just two options.
They either do a lot of lot of manual work or they basically customize some solutions that are more like generic ones, you know, for any industry. But they have to spend months, if not years, a lot of money and focus on basically making them work to reflect all the specifics of this long and complex real estate process.
So basically, there was no good solutions on the market. You know, you either spent a lot of money and time or you just do things manually, which means errors, which means frustrated people, which means eroding trust of your buyers. So that’s how the idea of Realpad was born somewhere around 2014. And basically, since then, we are just trying to solve more and more problems for our customers and obviously grow the customer base as much as possible.
Milan: Yeah! Thank you. Thank you. I would pose another question, which is very, very close. You are, in my opinion, making the improving the process still. It is better and better every year and you are still looking for opportunities.

08:03 Where are we the best.
But where would you say that the Realpad is the best, where is your unique selling proposition in this?
Marian: Actually, it’s connected to what I said before. I would say the main idea behind is that at the same time, we help mostly residential real estate developers digitize their customer facing operations and provide better service to their buyers. And they can do that without any heavy customization of the software, without investing a lot of time, focus and money into the process.
And it’s kind of plug and play solution that you can onboard very, very fast and I would say relatively conveniently, you know, like implementation of any software. And especially the mission critical one is never like never comes without some sweat. At the same time, I would say compared to any other alternatives, working with Realpad is the easiest one to go.
So basically, our value proposition is like, listen, you can either spend much more time and money on building something either on your own or on top of existing platforms that are more like generic ones, or you can simply work with us and it’s much more convenient for you.
Milan: Yeah. To make it more specific, I really appreciate your words about this purchasing of a house or flat. It’s one of the biggest desicions we make in our life and it takes us some time. How does your solution help us, normal people or developer, to make this process smoother, just to feel safer in this really important decision-making process?

09:51 Where customers welcome our help the most
Marian: Yeah, sure. So please don’t take my word for this. I will just replicate what I heard from our actual users because end buyers of Real Estate are not our customers. They’re obviously not paying for the solution, but they are interacting with the solution because part of our value proposition is something we call the Buyers Portal, which is a solution which helps Real Estate developer guide their buyers through the whole process of purchasing a new home. And that’s how buyers or people who are buying their new homes interact with Realpad. And actually, last time it was yesterday. I had a meeting with a potential investor and it was quite funny because both guys actually were buyers or customers at the development companies that are using Realpad. So both of them interacted with us and their feedback is usually the same. The whole process is much more transparent, which means they basically keep trust with the developer.
You know, they never have a feeling that the developer would be hiding information from them or that they would be informing them either late or providing them with wrong information, which basically erodes trust. And while this might sound as something super basic, unfortunately, this is not the norm in Real Estate development. But it’s not because the developers wouldn’t like to do this, but the thing is you need to coordinate tens of people.
There is a lot of information, the whole process is very long and specific and complicated and it really happens like super, super easy that you make an error in communication with your customer, that you provide them with the wrong information or you basically provide it too late and customer is getting lost in the process. They have a feeling that you are hiding something from them and so on. And basically it’s very easy turns into very frustrating, I would say, relationship between the buyer and the developer. So that’s how Realpad helps.
You know, you as a buyer, you have your own interface, which feels basically as an online banking. So instead of going to the bank, having calls, having tens of emails that you have all over your inbox, all the information about your transaction, all the documents, all the next steps, all the payments, communication with the developer, everything stays in one place. So basically you can just log into the interface and you are staying on top of the whole process. Because in the end of the day, it shouldn’t feel like this consumes one or one and a half year of your life. You know, like it should feel like a good thing that you are looking forward to move into your new home and the whole transaction and the whole bureaucratic process behind should be just as smooth as possible. And that’s exactly what we are providing to the buyers.
Milan: Excellent! We know that there’s a lot of pessimism on the market at the moment. The energy prices, inflation, every family, every person has deeper pockets and it is quite difficult. And there’s significant slowdown in the sales. But how does it look, if you have the abundance of views from more countries, and you can tell us how does it work in, is it so bad in Slovakia or in Czech Republic? Where is it better? Where is it worse?

13:20 Views from more countries: Dubai, Serbia, Finland, Poland, US, Europe.
Marian: Yeah, so definitely it’s not like surprisingly there are even countries or markets that even benefit from this situation. There are only a handful of them, but it’s quite well known that, for example, Dubai is heavily benefiting from, you know, many Russians are leaving Russia.
So, basically that market, for example, is super healthy. If I could mention one of the markets where we operate, I would say Serbia is doing comparably well. It’s been well known for having 80 percent of the buyers, cash buyers. So they are not influenced by the mortgage rates, basically.
However, I would say that the vast majority of residential markets is going through a cooldown. And the level of this cooldown depends on the country specifics. To give you one more example, you have countries where most people have adjustable rates mortgages, which means when the interest rate goes up, not only people who renew their fixation pay more, but actually, you know, whole market, every buyer with the mortgage is basically paying more.
I think Finland is one of those markets, as far as I know. Also, Poland has most of the mortgages on adjustable rate. And in these markets, you feel definitely much more much more pain. And the demand is almost completely destroyed because, you know, not only people have less money for new investments, but also they are, their wallets are attacked by not only  the inflation, not only by the energy prices, but also they are paying more for their existing homes. So this really depends. But I would say in general, all over the Western world, the U.S. and Europe, definitely, you know, higher higher interest rates equals lower demand equals cooldown of the market.
Milan: Yeah, and Realpad in your solution with this increasing of transparency in this difficult situation, macroeconomic situation, how would you describe? Is it helping some in some way? Is it helping to feel more safe, in the same sales and leasing process?

15:40 Where the needs of developers and buyers are shifting.
Marian: Yeah, so like, let’s be honest, we can’t create buyers out of thin air. So, you know, we cannot, basically, help developers and somehow create a demand that doesn’t exist.
However, what we can help with and where we see also focus of our customers shifting is much more focus on the conversion rates on, you know, whatever is left from the demand.
It is now like super important to treat every potential buyer completely different way than they were treated, let’s say, two years ago. OK, two years ago, you had like you just announced that you have a new project and you were almost sold out in the beginning. People were almost begging basically to get to the price list early and to even have the opportunity to buy something.
Today’s market is completely different. And frankly, not all the players have fully reflected this in their day to day operations. So we are basically helping the developers stay super organized in the pre-sale phase to keep track of each and every potential buyer to empower sales managers, track the whole sales process and make sure that their potential customers, especially in these hard times, you are not losing buyers because of poor service or poor communication. So that’s, I would say, one aspect of the thing.
And on the other hand, we still have tens of thousands of people who even in this, you know, I would say colder times are going through the process already because they made a reservation one year ago. And you also definitely don’t want to, I would say, turn these buyers into toxic buyers who would basically prevent you from either having higher retention and coming back to you maybe in two, three, four years from today when they are buying their next apartment or that they spread negative feedback.
So I would say the other part of the equation is that Realpad helps you serve your existing customers better and which helps your brand, which makes them more likely to refer you to their friends and family and which increases the likelihood that, I don’t know, in five years when they start a family and they are buying a new home, that they are coming back to you because they were super happy with the service. And, you know, also this depends on the culture.
In some cultures, I would say the service is not that important, but in most countries in Europe, you know, this having a feeling that you are served well is very open, is very often almost equally as important as the product itself that is delivered in the end.
Milan: To highlight the difference between developer that does not have RealPad solution that is functioning with traditional approach, I will choose one real estate company that will sell the whole property and I don’t care how they do it. What added value did they get with your solution?
Marian: Ah, so you mean you mean a developer who appoints a real estate agency?
Milan: Yeah.
Marian: That has not been happening too much for recently for two reasons. First of all, or at least in most geographies where we operate, first of all, most developers who are in the market are actually long-term players, especially in the environment in which building permits take years to obtain, you know, you it’s much harder to operate as an opportunistic player, I would say.

19:08 What developers do need to stay successful in a long run.
If you want to be successful in this business, like most of the really successful ones are long term players who basically build their pipeline of projects and, you know, in if you do this long term and if you do this on scale, you would be wasting a lot of money or you can save a lot of money by building your internal team.
Okay, so most developers we actually work with would have their in-house teams. However, we also work with the agencies because in many cases it just makes sense to delegate yourselves to the agency. If you are a one-time or I would say opportunistic or maybe one-time developer who is planning maybe one or two projects but is not in this for the long game, then it definitely makes sense.
But even in such a case, like either agencies or such developers are using Realpad. So I wouldn’t say that whether you work with the agency or in-house team makes a big difference. In the end of the day, you want to serve your customers well.

20:06 Helping both developers and real estate agencies.
Milan: And both you can help both the developer and the agency.
Marian: Yes, yes. I cannot disclose yet, but we are now in the process of in the final stages of negotiations with one of the, you know, big four agencies, the global ones. And while in most countries they focus on commercial real estate, in some countries they also sell new homes and it just makes perfect sense for us to work together. So that really doesn’t change.
But maybe to answer your question, like what is the main difference between the developer who uses Realpad and the one that doesn’t? I would say that in general, the one that doesn’t, first of all, they have like it’s much more difficult for them to keep all their buyers like super happy.
At the same time, I think it’s now also a talent question. I would say that smart people and especially young and modern people, they just don’t feel like working in a company that feels that they build their technology stack in 90s. You know, like people basically are used to using their smartphones, doing everything in an efficient way.
So, I would say also like Realpad serves as something where you show your talent. Listen, we want you to focus on our buyers. We want you to focus on the business. And we are not the type of company that employs you to spend 20 percent of your time doing the administration and manual reporting.

21:31 Commercial Real Estate needs help as well.
Milan: Excellent. This gives me a hint where I wanted to direct this conversation. You mentioned the commercial real estate. We were speaking mostly about residential developers. What do you have for commercial things? So did you prepare some product for them that can be helpful in a similar way? I know that last time, I’m sorry. I know that last time we had a commercial solution and we spoke about this sector, it has its specificities. And it is even less digitized, in my opinion, than the residential sector. The CRM solutions in commercial sector are more rare, in my opinion. Maybe I’m wrong. But what is your opinion? Does it pay off to go into this sector and do people need solutions in this sector as well?
Marian: Yeah, so our story has been as follows. We were working mostly with the residential developers and the whole mission of the company was to make it more enjoyable to buy and sell new build home. And then we were approached by actually two of our customers at the same time with the idea like or with the request. Like guys, you helped us a lot with the, in our residential section, but we have actually very similar problem in our leasing team.
We are using mostly spreadsheets. People waste time filling in manual reports. We are losing data. We have duplicates. It’s a mess, you know. So why don’t you do the same? And we were actually struggling with this opportunity for quite some time because at the same time, it makes the whole mission of the company more complicated, I would say.
But at the same time, the thesis behind is the same. For people who are looking for their new office, this is like very important. It’s the new residence. It’s where their culture basically is facilitated. So they are quite emotional. The whole transaction is also, again, long, complex and specific. So we heard the same from the developers. It’s not so easy for us to deploy any generic CRM or any generic customer service software because this transaction is so specific that we would spend months or years customizing such a software for our use case. So there were some pros and cons. And in the end, we decided to go for it. And the reason is that roughly 25 percent of residential developers have some kind of commercial portfolio.
Either they’re like full-scale commercial developers or in many cases, they just own some older commercial building that they are planning to redevelop into residential maybe 10 years from today. But during those 10 years, you interact with your tenants and you somehow need to operate. So we decided to step into the leasing game. And we now also offer the leasing CRM.
Milan: Excellent. We are, quickly, the time is running very quickly. And before I will pose my last question, I would like to a little bit more describe where is your value in the process. You mentioned the first contact with potential customer. When it is a lead and where you are really helping is to improve the conversion ratio. The communication is really recorded. You know that this is. How does it work?

25:25 Practical examples and experiences with adding value in particular cases
Matian: So let me give you a very particular example. All the examples I will mention are not like super frequent to happen, but whenever they happen, it might be like very big problem.
What was happening before RealPad was that you were using some kind of Excel spreadsheet with your price list, with all your units. And whenever you made the sales, you would have to update this price list, share it with all the people who are affected. So let’s say if you work with external agencies, then you would have to share it with external agents. And you would also have to mark this apartment sold on your website. Whenever you forgot to do that or there was any error, imagine you are getting some lead, someone who is really interested in your project and the first information you give them: Oh, but sorry, you know, the apartment you are inquiring about has been sold already. We just didn’t have time to update the website. It doesn’t really look professional.
The next step is like, okay, let’s say the apartment wasn’t sold and really you are inquiring an apartment that is available, but you have like three salespeople on your team and they somehow coordinate poorly and no one really follows up with the buyer. You know, like anyone who was interacting with real estate, especially, I don’t know, 10 years ago, would tell you it’s definitely not guaranteed that you sent inquiry, that you are interested in some home and you would be really even contacted. You know, like it was very, very frequent that you would have to chase someone and remind them about your very existence.
So, uh, and you know, this is just very early stage of the whole process. I could continue with, uh, with the fact that, uh, you know, you are interested in this apartment, but there is someone else who has been, who has shown their interest two days ago. So how do you coordinate this queue, let’s say, or a duplicate interest, uh, in one apartment? So RealPad helps with that. You know, you are, you get the information, okay, there is someone else interested, but thanks to RealPad I can see that they need to make a decision within three days. Uh, so, you know, it doesn’t happen that you basically tell your buyer, you know. Listen, I don’t even know whether it’s, whether it’s properly available or not. I need to call my colleague, you know?
And then we also help with automated generation of contracts, uh, which, uh, also it might be a minor thing, uh, but I would say it doesn’t put you in the best light if you send the proposal of the contract to your buyer and it contains some errors. So, uh, with our contract automation feature, we help, uh, we help our customers, uh, avoid or minimize errors in, um, in their contracts.
And I could finish with the very last stages of the, of the whole process after maybe this one, one and a half or two years when your home is finally ready and you go for, you go for a handover, uh, before RealPad, most developers would be using, uh, uh, paper, uh, pen and paper method. You would have like paper handover protocol. You would write down all the, all the defects, uh, from, uh, from the handover, uh, on the paper, uh, sign it manually. And then somehow magically people are moving, you know, moving these, uh, to spreadsheets then from spreadsheets to a general contractor while RealPad, uh, streamlines this process, makes it a much more simpler and automated, which leaves much less space for errors.
So it doesn’t happen to you that you move into your new apartment and someone is calling to you after two weeks and saying like: Listen, I know that you reported some defect in your home, but can you actually clarify what is the problem? Because I can see this, you know, two or three words there, but I have no idea, you know, I have no clue like, uh, what, what the actual problem is.
So, uh, actually there are these, all these potential errors that you can make during the whole process, but there are just tens of them. And, uh, as I said, like none of them happens like super frequently. None of them is a, is a killer, but as a whole, uh, if you are making a, or if you have these errors in your customer facing operations, you simply have more frustrated buyers who are less likely to be happy with you.
Uh, who even some of them become really toxic and, uh, it’s not easy to manage your relationship with them. Uh, so it becomes frustrating for your team. These people are less likely to refer you less likely to come back. And, uh, and then basically when you have a new project, you need to invest more in marketing. You need to, you need to attract the buyers and invest much more time into generating demand for your project.
Milan: Yeah. I remember a very nice article from last year, and I think it was written by Corwin, uh, and they were very happy with, uh, exactly the products that were helping them to remove all the defects, when there was a handover and nothing was lost that the customers are, have a tool, uh, for, uh, making it as they wish. Will it be part of the commercial solution as well? Or is it at the moment?
Uh, not yet. Not yet. Uh, we are actually very cautious about, uh, not entering the property management software, uh, industry. Uh, the thing is that, uh, there are so many providers of, uh, you know, that, that specialize in various niches and segments of this market, uh, that, uh, I don’t think that the world needs yet another property management software, or I would say full scale property management software.
So that’s why we stay only in the leasing process. Our work is done once the, uh, once the tenant is moved in and we serve mostly, uh, for, uh, leasing teams, uh, or commercial teams of the developer and financial department slash lawyers, but we don’t aim to be facility management software or, uh, property management software because there are so many of them already.

31:07 Very good experience of Realpad with Corwin
And maybe one thing to mention, you mentioned Corwin and they were actually, uh, they were the first, uh, customers or even the pilot customer who helped us, uh, and we even initiated this idea of the, of the handover process.
And I must say they’re like one of the, definitely one of the most, uh, innovative, uh, companies, uh, at least in Slovakia.
So, uh, there are many, many others with whom we are happy to pilot and, uh, who come up with great ideas. Uh, but, uh, again, I don’t want to be too humble, but I would say, especially this, uh, handover part, uh, it was, uh, even more of a, more Corbin’s idea than, uh, than ours. And it was like a very nice joint cooperation.

31:47 Plans for 2023, MIPIM, etc.
Milan: Nice, I think that was really, really good. Uh, I have one last question. I know that you are going to MIPIM and meet me is always about plans and about new contacts and, and, uh, networking. It’s very nice events in Cannes. And, uh, what are your plans actually for 2023? Uh, what, which market would you like to enter? What new products features would you like to add?
Marian: Uh, you know, like we are now, we are no different from our customers. We were also affected by the currency situation. Uh, we were already, we were already launching two new markets in Western Europe.
But, uh, given the situation on the market, plus, um, uh, the fact that it’s, uh, it’s definitely much more expensive to expand in Western Europe compared to, uh, compared to Eastern Europe, uh, we decided to put those plans on hold.
Uh, however, it, uh, it still seems that a large part of the market, especially the long-term players, uh, just, uh, operate well. So we are reviving these plans and, uh, we, uh, we aim to open to Western European markets this year.
Uh, I’m not sharing which, uh, yet, uh, because it’s still working progress, but, uh, basically, uh, before we have country managers in these countries, uh, me and our head of sales, Roman are mostly responsible for those customers, uh, ourselves.
So my main plan for Cannes is to meet with our existing customers because we already have a bunch of customers in Western Europe and, uh, and also, uh, our customers from Eastern Europe as well. Definitely.
So, um, for me, to be honest, it’s not a, it’s not a party. I, I, I’m quite an efficient person and, uh, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m trying to like, frankly speaking for me, uh, Cannes is, uh, just the replacement of four business trips.
You know, otherwise I would have to travel to Belgium and Luxembourg and, uh, and Denmark. And instead of that, I, I am able to meet all of those people in Cannes. Yeah. Similar, similar as Dubai for, for, for, uh, this, uh, these countries, not, not the, uh, destination for, for holiday, but, uh,
The best thing about Cannes is actually, uh, uh, you know, the, the fact that it’s not Paris and that it’s like small town on the, on the French Riviera and far from, you know, anything, uh, anything else.
Uh, which might be, which might be seen as a, as a bug, but actually it’s a feature. And, uh, the thing is that, uh, really that makes Mipim like super intense, you know, and you, you cannot, you cannot really escape Mipim, you know, like, uh, wherever you go, like the whole Cannes, uh, is just, uh, it just leaves and breathes, um, real estate for a week.
And I think that’s actually, that’s kind of fun. So, um, uh, that’s why, that’s why I like.
Milan: Thank you. Thank you very much. Uh, uh, let me, let me wish you, uh, good luck on Mipim and in your business future. And I wish you a lot of success.
Marian: Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Likewise. I really love the way you approach, uh, PropTech Slovakia, you know, like, uh, in, in the Czech Republic, we also try to organize the PropTech community, but, uh, it’s just a more, I would say in internal community of, uh, PropTechs. But, uh, the work you are doing, you know, like bridging the real estate and, and PropTech is a really great. So I wish you all the best with that.
Milan: Thank you. That maybe that would be nice that, that we should, uh, more interconnect our activities and, uh, maybe we should more often visit Prague.
Marian: I definitely agree.
Milan: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. And, uh, I hope we will see and meet soon.
Marian: Likewise. Have a good day. Thank you for having me.