The municipality will buy 35 flats from a company belonging to the City Hall of Prague 3 for CZK 223 million
Updates: 26.05.2022 12:51
Released: 26.05.2022, 12:51
Prague – The Prague City Hall will buy 35 flats from the joint-stock company Housing Property Administration of the Prague 3 District, owned by the Žižkov City Hall. The city will pay 222.61 million crowns for the apartments. All purchased flats have their tenants who will be able to stay in the flats. This is what Prague representatives are talking about today. The purchase was criticized by some opposition representatives.
“We welcomed the offer, because in our housing strategy we have the purchase of flats as one of the ways to expand the housing stock. In addition, the municipality in Prague 3 has no flats,” said councilor Adam Zábranský (Pirates).
Out of a total of 35 flats, four tenants have a lease for an indefinite period, which has a three-month notice period. Two apartments are business and will probably turn into rent after the transfer to the city. People in other apartments have regular leases for a certain period of time, which will not be terminated prematurely. Five apartments are now vacant, but are used for crisis housing of Ukrainian refugees.
The purchase was criticized by the opposition. “We fundamentally disagree with this procedure. We respect that the city district wants to sell apartments, but we do not know why the capital should buy,” said Alexandra Udženija (ODS), the deputy and mayor of Prague 2. According to her, the town hall is facing financial problems, so it needs to be sold, but it would make more money on the market.
Opposition MP and MP Patrik Nacher (YES) said the purchase was in line with the efforts of both parties, where the city should strive for the lowest possible price, while the city hall should strive for the highest possible. According to the opposition representative Jiří Kubíček (ODS / Svobodní), the city’s housing stock will not grow, as they will only transfer from the administration of the company belonging to Prague 3 under the municipality. Zábranský did not agree with this, because now the city does not decide on their use.
The chairman of the YES opposition representatives, Ondřej Prokop, was upset that the city would not buy the apartments in a proper competition. At the same time, it is said that it is unclear how the money spent on the apartments will get from the joint-stock company into the town hall budget.
In recent years, Prague has been facing a housing crisis due to high apartment prices. One solution is to expand the city’s housing stock. According to the strategy approved last year, the city wants to expand the number of its flats by 500 per year by 2030, but in recent years their number has been declining and new ones are practically not being built. According to KPMG’s 2018 analysis, 194,000 flats became the property of Prague after 1991, and the vast majority of them were subsequently sold off in privatizations.