At the start of the decade, Prague had little pull as a property investment center. A lot has changed since — most recently, in the city's selection as the best location in a survey of international investors in Emerging Trends in Real Estate Europe 2005.

"Prague has made huge progress as a property investment location," says Glen Lonie, head of the PricewaterhouseCoopers real estate industry team for Central and Eastern Europe. "In five years, from having virtually no investment transactions, it has hit the top of investors' buy lists."

As international investments increased, so did the need for services to manage them, and these service companies are riding the wave as well.

Nowhere is that more evident than at Impact-Corti Property Services.

The company, which manages property primarily for international clients, has seen 100 percent growth in four of the past five years, and has had to forcibly temper its expansion.

"There is a huge demand," says Jürg Zwahlen, managing director of Impact-Corti. "Right now, we could take another six or seven buildings, but it would not be healthy growth."

Impact-Corti was the result of a classic merger in 2001 between the Czech-American Impact and the Swiss-based Cortireality, which had been competitors in the same market. Zwahlen, a Swiss, shares ownership with his partner Thomas Soukup, an American.

When the company began, it had nine employees.

"Four years ago, we said we did not want to have more than 20 employees," Zwahlen says. It now has 60 employees and is still short-handed.

The growth forced the firm into a bigger office two months ago, in the new Lighthouse Vltava Waterfront Towers in the Prague 7 neighborhood of Holešovice.

Steady expansion

Impact-Corti started by specializing in accounting and property management, which still accounts for 60 percent of its business. But opportunity and market deficiencies allowed it to quickly expand into a full-service provider.

For example, the company used to work with real estate agencies to lease its clients' units, but took over a lion's share of the responsibility when it found that many of the agencies were only interested in short-term gain.

"In the end, we had to do the hard work ourselves," Zwahlen says. Now their buildings have higher occupancy rates than when they were outsourced to agencies. Impact-Corti is now independent of agencies, although it still often contracts through them.

The consulting branch of the firm arose from a similar necessity.

"At least five clients that I know of came with properties this year because they had money stolen," Zwahlen says. Usually, the problem is due to previous managers who pocketed rent, altered the books or even sold parts of the investors' property out from under them.

The engineering branch, which also started two years ago, grew to meet the needs of existing clients who wanted to expand. It is booked solid for the next two years, with more than 30 projects in the pipeline. The company also undertakes two or three "niche projects" of its own every year.

Impact-Corti does not advertise; nearly all of its growth has been by word of mouth. Zwahlen believes advertising would be pointless.

"It's like being a doctor," he says. "If you have heart problems, you don't go to the phone book and look for the cardiologist with the best ad. You ask people, 'Do you know a good cardiologist?' "

Typical clients come with properties when they are having problems with their current managers, Zwahlen says. "These are good projects, but they are completely mismanaged. In these cases, you don't need to wonder why there is less income."

Staying independent

Zwahlen knows that Prague will eventually fall from its position as an elite locale for property investment, but says he is not concerned. "We are quite sure the service we do will be able to handle the market coming under pressure. When it does, it's the bad companies that will be the first ones in trouble."

And since it is from those companies that it gleans most of its clients, Impact-Corti stands to gain strength even as the market weakens.

In 2007, the company will open a subsidiary real estate auditing firm — again, out of necessity. "In many cases, our people here are better qualified than the people we pay to do the legal audits," Zwahlen says.

Impact-Corti considered adding a law department this year, but decided that contracting specialized firms on a case-by-case basis was cheaper and more effective.

For now, the emphasis is on making sure the company doesn't get what Zwahlen calls a "big-company attitude," where clients are being pushed from one department to another. Staying independent is key, he says, adding that the company has turned down several acquisition offers.