Nery Alaev writes about real estate in Poland.
Once again, Poland has shown its strength in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region of Europe as real estate transactions totalled €2 billion. I’ve written previously on Poland’s real estate prowess, as well as the other nations in the region.
Today, I’ve chosen to write about the strength of the region, including Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
New investments
In Poland, developments such as Redefine’s acquisition of a 75% stake in the Echo Investment commercial platform in Poland. The deal includes retail schemes located in Kalisz, Szczecin and Wrocław. Also, office projects such as the A4 Business Park in Katowice, Astra Park in Kielce, Malta Office Park in Poznań among several others.
Over half of the deals made in H1 2016 took place in Poland’s regional markets – several notable transactions took place in Gdańsk in particular.
There was investment in Gdańsk
Summarising the data, Stuart Jordan of JLL, said:
„The volume of real estate investment transactions concluded in the CEE region in H1 2016 totalled €5.1 billion. This represents a 69% increase over the same period last year and is the best H1 performance in CEE real estate investment volume since 2007.
Investor interest in commercial projects remains strong, and as a result, we expect the total volume of transactions for 2016 to exceed €10 billion”
Asset class differences
Over €1 billion was invested in retail, nearly €800 million in office space and around €250 million in warehousing – this clearly indicates the trends currently at play in Poland’s real estate environment – one where retail is dominating quite clearly.
As for the types of deals made, Agata Sekuła of JLL notes that there has been diverse deal-making at play during H1 2016. She states that:
“It is also worth noticing that deals ranging from small single assets to complex platform transactions were concluded in H1”
In summary – Poland continues to impress in regards to real estate, perhaps the time to invest is right now?
Nery Alaev
Nery Alaev is the current Director of ESN Investments GmbH, which engages in acquisition and development of commercial and residential property in Germany and Austria.