The former Polish communist party building comprises 27,000 sqm of usable space Kasia Marcinkiewicz / WBJ

The former headquarters of the Polish communist party, widely referred to as the Party House or, ironically, the White House, may soon go on sale, according to Gazeta Wyborcza. The daily last week reported that the State Treasury is going sell the property along with part of the adjoining Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) building.

The estates are located in Warsaw’s city center, in the vicinity of the capital’s de Gaulle roundabout and Pl. Trzech Krzyży. The symbol of the era of Polish communism, constructed in 1952, comprises 27,000 sqm of usable space, including 18,000 sqm of office space. For its part, the WSE building, completed in 2000, offers 36,000 sqm of usable space, over 19,000 sqm of which is office space.

The former communist party building, as well as 60 percent of the WSE building, are owned by the state-owned company Centrum Bankowo-Finansowe (CBF) “Nowy Świat,” a company that the State Treasury wants privatize in the near future.

According to Gazeta Wyborcza, a preliminary appraisal of CBF and its assets has already been conducted by advisory BAA Polska. The value of the two properties has been set at zł.158.4-260 million, which would set the price per sqm at zł.4,000-6,000.

The appraisal has already caused much controversy and will probably be re-assessed. The suggested value has, given the properties’ superb location, been widely deemed too low.

Admittedly, the current market value of the buildings may prove hard to estimate, market experts say, because of the lack of any comparable transactions in that part of the city recently. “There have simply been no major office transactions in this area this year,” Tomasz Puch of real estate consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle told Gazeta Wyborcza.

Spokespeople for the WSE, building administrator Centrum Giełdowe, Centrum Bankowo-Finansowo and the Treasury all declined to comment on this matter.