With effect from this January, Cushman & Wakefield is the manager of both shopping centres in Mladá Boleslav. Both Olympia Mladá Boleslav, which Cushman & Wakefield has been managing since 2015, and Bondy shopping centre are now under the management of one company. CPI Property Group owns both centres.

The sound global and domestic investment climate generated a major push in property investment activity in Hungary reaching the second highest ever registered annual volume of €1.7 billion in 2016, i.e. 133% up from the previous year. The most popular type of assets were offices with a share of 56%, followed by retail at 25%, while industrial deals accounted for 11% of the overall volume.

Goodman is now constructing a second modern warehouse building totalling 36,700 sqm in Pomeranian Logistics Centre. The company’s flagship development in Poland has already secured five new pre-lease agreements.

Hilton has reached a franchise agreement with Accent Hotel Management to open Hilton Garden Inn Budapest City Centre. The 214-guestroom hotel is set to become Hilton’s third hotel in Budapest by 2018.

Search engines have become an integrated part of the daily life of people and companies as well. Not only the process of buying a book or planning a vacation has changed drastically over the last decade but companies looking for office space are also turning to the Internet more often. The latest Tea & Talk session, co-organised by RICS Hungary and VLK Cresa in Budapest, helped us understand how changes in technology will affect brokers, tenants and landlords.

In 2016, the Warsaw office market grew by 407,000 sqm of new space in 21 projects. The vacancy rate has grown by 1.9 pp on a yearly basis to 14.2 of total stock with central locations having lower occupancy rates than non-central locations. The Polish Office Research Forum has published its data on the Warsaw office market for Q4 2016. 

Prologis announced fourth quarter and full year 2016 activity in Europe. Prologis Europe ended the fourth quarter with 96.7 percent occupancy, an increase of 90 basis points over the course of 2016. The company signed new leases and renewals totalling 718,200 square metres in the fourth quarter and 3.5 million square metres in the full year 2016 – an increase in volume of 54 percent over 2015.

Knight Frank has been appointed asset manager, property manager and sole agency of the Zgorzelec Plaza shopping and entertainment centre. A new lease agreement with a fitness services provider has also been signed recently.

Panattoni Europe has expanded its team. The developer’s ranks have been joined by Adam Janus, who has taken the position of Business Development Director. He will be responsible for attracting new warehouse projects and aligning the developer’s services with the needs of clients and prospects.

Total real estate investment volume in the Czech Republic exceeded €3.7 billion in 2016, CBRE revealed. The most notable transactions in 2016 were the sale of P3 Logistics Parks, the Park and Florentinum, with 67 transactions being mediated on the Czech market in total.