Vida Imobiliária - Paulo Jervell

In the Vida Imobiliária’s latest edition, Paulo Jervell, partner of Openbook, shares his vision of Portuguese Real Estate in 2021.

Read the English version below:

DOSSIER // PERSPECTIVES 2021
Paulo Jervell
OPENBOOK ARCHITECTURE
Partner

After a year unlike any other, I enter 2021 with the feeling that I haven’t completely moved on from 2020. It’s still unclear how the pandemic situation will evolve and what economic consequences may arise, but I’m certain that the real estate market has the resilience to recover quickly.

Starting with the corporate market, which is very close to us, we’ve heard a bit of everything, but at the end of the day, the conclusion is always the same: working from home is not the same as working in the office. A lot gets lost along the way. In this sense, we foresee a swift and gradual recovery of the office space, with new strategies and a lot of “workplace” efforts, especially from the beginning of the second quarter of the year. I believe it is fundamentally important to keep in mind that investments in office spaces—as we’ve already been observing in the last half of 2020—will continue. It will indeed be a year of investment in external workspaces, engaging new experiences for employees to welcome them back with a focus on their well-being; with more collaboration and leisure areas and greater versatility.

In the tourism and hospitality sector, despite the difficult moment the industry is going through, for us it was still a year of attracting new projects. In our view, this is a good indicator of hope and confidence in the recovery of national and international tourism in the near future.

In the residential area, I anticipate a good year. Beyond the trend we were already seeing before the pandemic, people are trying to resolve all the issues in their homes, in which they have been investing heavily. The resilience and recovery capacity are evident. We must not fail at the last hurdle due to bureaucratic issues.