One of the most active developers of Prague’s office market is ready to embrace the digital transformation and is actively looking at new projects and new locations. Alexandra Tomášková, Managing Director of Skanska Property Czech Republic talked to Property Forum about changing tenant needs, digitisation and market expectations.

RICS has recently welcomed over 70 newly qualified professionals who have recently joined in Central & Eastern Europe, as a result of membership assessments held in Bucharest, Budapest, Prague and, for the first time, in Sofia.

Amundi Czech Republic has completed the acquisition of the company holding the property Polygon office building at Pankrác in Prague for its KB realitní fond 2. The property was sold by Mint Investments. Cushman & Wakefield facilitated the transaction.

Lithuanian company Apex Alliance, the owner of the Hilton Garden Inn hotel in Bucharest’s old town, will invest €90 million in four new hotels on the Romanian market. The hotels will operate under Marriot International and Hilton World Wide brands.

The local industrial and logistics stock exceeded the 3 million sqm threshold, reaching 3.12 million sqm at the end of H1 2018, according to Romania's Industrial & Logistics Market H1 2018 report by Cushman & Wakefield Echinox. Almost 90% of the current stock is concentrated in Bucharest and in five other cities - Timisoara, Cluj-Napoca, Ploiesti, Brasov and Pitesti.

Poland’s warehouse and logistics market is truly booming at the moment. The data for the first half of 2018 shows that, following last year’s success when the total volume of modern warehouse space increased by 21%, the market is not slowing down, according to BNP Paribas Real Estate Poland.

Bucharest’s Floreasca/Barbu Vacarescu area is the most valuable fusion between retail and office spaces. According to Colliers International Romania, for every 1,000 sqm of offices, there is 35-40 sqm of retail space. In total, in the Floreasca/Barbu Vacarescu area, there is about 10,000 sqm of such spaces at the ground floor of the office buildings, with the rents generated by these holding a share of 4-5% of the total cashed in by landlords.

MOM Park, a 50,000 sqm prime shopping mall and office property in Budapest was sold by a consortium of a fund managed by Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing, Hungarian developer and investor Wing and Austrian shopping centre specialist CC Real to OTP Real Estate Investment Fund. The mall had been acquired in 2015 by the consortium, and since then significant investments have been made in the building enhancing its value as a property and a business.

HB Reavis has successfully sold two Warsaw office buildings to Savills Investment Management (Savills IM) who acted on behalf of a global pension fund client. Offering ca. 53,000 sqm, Buildings C and D of Gdanski Business Center are now entirely owned by the global pension fund.

Investment volume on the Romanian market in the first half of 2018 amounted to approximately €386 million, down 27% from the same period of the previous year, when the investment market reached a value of €530 million, according to Cushman & Wakefield Echinox calculations and estimates. This decline comes amid a substantial number of transactions that had not been fully completed by June 30, while their eventual closure in the second half of the year will push the market to a level of transactions comparable to that achieved in 2017, of almost €1 billion.