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Rightly proud of its success, Crown Global Kft is delighted to announce that it has won the "Best Development Hungary" award. Winning Directors Benjamin Lebor and John Marshall travelled to London on October 13th to attend the CNBC gala dinner at the Marriott Hotel in London’s Grosvenor Square on Friday, October 16th, in order to accept their award.

The event is part of the International Property Awards, the world’s most prestigious competition dedicated to finding the best real estate professionals across the globe. The fact that Crown global Kft. has won one of these coveted awards is proof that Hungary is not only able to compete at this level, but also triumph within the highly competitive Europe and Africa property arenas.

Later this year, top scoring winners from the Europe & Africa Property Awards will compete against other winning companies from Asia Pacific, the UK, Americas and Arabia to find the ultimate World’s Best in each category.

Entries were judged by a panel of professionals whose collective knowledge of the property industry is second to none and unsurpassed by any other property awards. This year’s judges included Eric Pickles MP, chairman of the Conservative Party, Ben Wood, industry head property markets of Google UK; Peter Bolton King, group chief executive of the National Federation of Property Professionals; Imtiaz Farookhi, chief executive of the National House Building Council; Christopher Hall, president elect of FIABCI; Wilhelm Harnish, Master Builders of Australia (MBA); Thijis Stoffer, International Consortium of Real Estate Agents Association (ICREA); Helen Shield, editor-in-chief of International Homes Luxury Collection magazine and Gillian Farr, head of design of Laura Ashley Home.

Managing Director of Crown Global Kft, Benjamin Lebor, said of winning the award, “With the impact of the global recession, my team had to re-work and re-position THE GARDENS development, so as to attract the maximum interest from a much reduced pool of investors Worldwide. Winning the “Best Development Hungary” award is proof we did it right, and is a just reward for 6 months of creativity and hard work, as our www.thegardensbudapest website shows.”

“In 6 months’ time, we predict that the price of prime commercial assets in the key European markets will be rising again, following the trend already set by London. By spring 2010 investors who haven’t made a purchase will have missed the bottom of the market.”

Against a backdrop of weak demand for office space, rising availability and falling rents, prime London office space has been the target of investors since the beginning of 2009.

“London is clearly at the centre of many investors' focus since sourcing prime assets on the continent is still relatively difficult” says Chris Gore, King Sturge, London City Investment. “Sterling's relative weakness helps the UK but investors only consider prime assets with security of income; the order of the day is wealth preservation rather than wealth creation.”

There are signs that H1 2009 may be the low-point of the current cycle and London may be one of the markets at the forefront of the revival, although further downturns are still expected at least until the end of the year, with those office markets most open to international influences seeing the greatest changes.

“The Budapest office market in the last 12-18 months has seen quite the change, thankfully we did not see the rental spikes as in other markets, therefore the impact on headline rents has not been so harsh,” said Ward Stocker, partner in the Budapest office of King Sturge. “It is tough times for all, but landlords can maximize value by approaching tenants and encouraging them to extend lease terms for rental decreases and incentives. Tenants are staying in existing buildings, providing the landlord is reasonable. In terms of the investment market the door is opening and we are seeing an increase in interest, but this still needs to transact into investment deals.”