Who manages Ljubljana's blocks

SPL manages 21,762 flats in 1,028 buildings, 22% of all flats in buildings with 4+ flats. The second largest has 6%. Another 110 managers share the rest, from large companies to sole traders with a single building.

On the map some managers are tied to one estate and others are spread across the city. The register does not list 1,638 buildings with 16,960 flats, mostly smaller and newer ones.

Is a flat dearer when its building has a "good" manager? We compared each of 13,869 sales since 2016 with an expected price that accounts for location, the time of sale, the flat and the building. A single sale differs from its expected price by ±21% on average, a manager by only about ±3%. Rents show the same (±4%).

A manager is not why a flat costs more or less. What looks like a difference between managers is mostly a difference between the neighbourhoods they work in.

Where managers really differ is renovation. Among buildings built before 2001, Emona plus has a façade or roof renovated since 2011 on 59% of its buildings, 35 percentage points more than expected from age, size, structure, location and public ownership. Prima plus is 25 points below expected, SZ Tomačevo Jarše 13. SPL is exactly at the expected rate.

The cadastre records a renovation year when someone reports it, so part of a gap may be diligence in reporting. Energy certificates confirm the renovations across buildings, but only weakly across managers.

The blocks along Jakopičeva ulica (38 buildings built around 1999) have a single manager, SPL. The City and its housing fund own 70% of the flats there. The blocks along Ulica bratov Učakar in Koseze (34 buildings from around 1978) have 12 managers.

Ljubljana has 119 such estates, groups of at least five neighbouring similar blocks of one period. Fragmentation is a matter of age. Estates with one manager are mostly new (median build year 2005), their manager appointed by the developer or a public owner. Estates with three or more managers date from around 1965: after privatisation every block chose on its own.

Within an estate, blocks with different managers can be compared directly: the place, the age and the kind of building are the same. SPL then renovates 9 percentage points less than the neighbouring blocks (418 buildings in 72 estates), and Emona plus 55 more. The managers rank the same way as in the city-wide comparison.

The register says when a building signed with its current manager. In 1992–2003 SPL took on average 43% of all new contracts, and after 2015 never more than 17%. As many as 99% of its current Ljubljana flats signed before 2019.

Since 2022 the building cadastre also keeps a history of managers. Since then 10,040 Ljubljana flats have changed manager. SPL lost 1,166 and gained 540, net −626. The fastest growers were B Tech (+1,655), Primus projekt (+931) and Naša soseska (+841).

A quarter of the switches (2,548 of 10,040 flats) were in buildings whose previous manager is now bankrupt or struck off the business register. The largest was Mastra, now in bankruptcy: 1,318 flats in 15 buildings, which went to 11 different managers, one after another. Next come Metalka stanovanjske storitve (510) and Cigale & Co. (234).

Much of B Tech's growth is taking over these buildings: 614 flats from managers that no longer exist.

The City of Ljubljana and its housing fund are co-owners in many blocks. Where they own more than a fifth of the flats, SPL manages the building in 71% of cases; where they own none, in 34%. SPL hardly ever loses such buildings: of 106, 1 has left since 2022, against 7% of the others.

In 63 buildings the City owns the majority and decides alone. SPL manages 46 of them. But of the 14 such buildings built since 2000, SPL has only 36%; the City entrusted its new buildings to others.

The City does not choose the manager of a co-owned building through public procurement. From City bodies and companies SPL received €1.0 million in public contracts, out of €88 million in all.

Where the City owns the majority, its buildings are overwhelmingly managed by SPL, and buildings with a large City share almost never leave it. The data cannot show whether this is a choice or simply never switching, nor whether SPL is more expensive. These buildings signed with SPL in the 1990s; keeping a manager is not the same as choosing it today.

The largest public buyer of building management is the Housing Fund of the Republic of Slovenia, which contracts out the management of its rental flats across the country. SPL won every lot in 2022 (10) and 2024 (7), 81% of the value since 2021 in all. In 2026 the fund split the tender by region: SPL won 11 of the 20 signed lots, Staninvest 7 and Zarja 2.

The same pattern appears elsewhere. In Jesenice, Dominvest manages 73% of the buildings the municipality or its fund co-owns, and only 24% of the others. In Izola, Stavbenik upravljanje 65% against 17%; in Maribor, Staninvest 75% against 45%. Velenje is the exception, the other way round.

Municipalities almost never choose the manager of a co-owned building through public procurement. The co-owners decide by vote, and the public co-owner votes like any other.

No register holds the cost of management. We do not know what anyone pays a manager, what is in the reserve fund or how fast a manager responds.

Nobody collects complaints publicly. The City's citizen-initiative portal hardly mentions managers (214 of 63,143 filings, SPL 43), because the filings concern public space.

Renovations are those someone reported to the cadastre. Building permits will be the next check.

The register knows only current contracts. Buildings that left a manager before 2022 are not visible anywhere.