The Apartment Building of the Year is this year the house from Ústí nad Labem

Apartment Building of the Year 2010 source: www.scmbd.cz

Prague - The winner of this year's Apartment Building of the Year competition for the best renovated panel building is the housing association Družba from Ústí nad Labem. In second place is a panel building from Kunovice in the Uherské Hradiště region, and third place was taken by the Nová Huť cooperative from Ostrava. This was announced today by the Union of Czech and Moravian Housing Cooperatives.
    The expert jury assessed various factors such as the extent of repairs, budget costs per apartment, resulting energy savings, or the energy demand of the building. The aim of the competition is to promote the modernization of apartment buildings despite shrinking state support for repairs.
    According to a study by the Panel Scan of the State Housing Development Fund, there are approximately 1.2 million apartments in panel buildings in the Czech Republic and another 961,000 housing units in non-panel residential buildings. Of the total of 2.2 million units in apartment buildings, the study reports that 36 percent of apartments have been renovated. Some form of repair has been carried out on 55 percent of apartments in panel buildings and 12 percent of units in non-panel apartments, according to the study.
    "It should be noted that these were not always comprehensive repairs and modernizations, but rather partial interventions in the buildings and their individual structural components," stated the organizers of the Apartment Building of the Year competition.
    The main tool of the state for supporting repairs of apartment buildings is the New Panel program of the State Housing Development Fund. However, due to a lack of funds, it has not been accepting applications for interest rate subsidies since May.