VALERON
Our approach
Regeneration is not a style. It is a sequence of questions asked in a particular order, and the order is what keeps the answers honest.
01
The next chapter starts with what is already here
This is our reading of the Prague market, drawn from our own screening rather than from a published statistic.
Part of the city’s commercial stock has aged out of the use it was built for. Tenants move to newer, more efficient space, and the owner faces a choice: refurbish, cut rents, or change what the building is for.
Changing the use resolves that choice wherever the structure allows it. It produces homes in established locations with transport already in place, and it does so without consuming land at the edge of the city.
It also produces something a new building cannot: a street that stays recognisable. That is not a small thing in Prague, and it is one of the reasons an owner and a planning authority can often agree on regeneration when they cannot agree on replacement.
02
The building decides before the price does
Plan depth and daylight determine whether a change of use is feasible.
Pre-war and early-modern buildings tend to have shallow floorplates: windows close together, and structures that tolerate change. Apartments fall out of them naturally and economically.
Buildings from the 1990s and 2000s can make good homes. We assess plan depth, façade, daylight and the scope for a new layout. What decides it is the specific design and its feasibility, not the year of construction.
A deeper plan is a harder problem, not an automatic rejection. Daylight to habitable rooms has to be verified by specialist assessment — and it is the single most useful thing an owner can establish about their own building before speaking to anybody.
Shallow floorplate
Daylight crosses the full depth. Apartments fall out naturally.
Deeper floorplate
The interior zone needs a suitable use or a different layout. It is not an automatic exclusion.
- Façade
- Lit zone
- Interior zone
Schematic, not a measured figure and not a daylight simulation. Interior zones require a suitable use or a different layout; daylight to habitable rooms must be verified by specialist assessment. No specific building is depicted.
03
From potential to a practical plan
Five steps, of which the first three cost you nothing but a conversation.
04
What discipline means here
Limits written as rules, not stated as intentions.
- A calculated price ceiling that is not exceeded.
- A margin floor below which we do not buy.
- An annual cap on entries and construction starts.
- A cap on exposure to any single district, so projects do not compete with each other.
- Pre-sale cover before construction drawdown.
- Cost overruns funded from equity first.
- Interest rate hedging as policy, not as opinion.
05
The planning and building-regulation context
Changes to the planning and building framework bear directly on change of use.
Current changes to the planning and building framework open up the opportunity to bring back into use buildings that would have remained unused under earlier conditions. We look for a new use for them that makes sense both in the quality of the space and in the economics of the project.
What that will mean in practice for any single regeneration depends on instruments that are not yet settled.
06
In-house expertise throughout the process
Our in-house capabilities span design & build, legal, finance and sales. This enables us to manage and deliver the entire conversion and subsequent sale through our own teams. Bringing these capabilities together is a significant competitive advantage, enabling direct coordination, faster decision-making and ongoing control over quality, costs and programme.
07
What the approach does not claim
That every building can be regenerated. Most cannot, and the screening exists to find that out early.
That consent is certain. It is not. Every project goes through a process with an uncertain outcome.
That a return is guaranteed. It is not.