Central and Eastern European markets are booming and most segments of the property business are growing rapidly, thus providing an opportunity for advisory firms to expand. Jonathan Hallett, Managing Partner for Central Europe talked to Property Forum about Cushman & Wakefield’s plans for the region.

Panattoni Europe has embarked on the project to build the central warehouse for the building and home design retail chain, OBI. The BTS facility with close to 50,700 sqm will be delivered near Łódź, in the Nowosolna commune. Its development has been divided into two stages – with the first one scheduled for completion in November 2017.

The first Hilton Garden Inn hotel in Romania is to be opened by end-2017 in Bucharest. The 201-room hotel will be located within an historic listed building in the city centre. Hilton Garden Inn Bucharest Old Town will be administered by hotel management company Apex Alliance Hotel Management.

Bog’Art has been selected to build the new Bucharest headquarters of Renault, according to zf.ro. The new office building, to be named Renault Connected Bucharest, will comprise 47,000 sqm of office space.

Savills has been appointed as an exclusive agent responsible for the recommercialisation of part of Centrum Krakowska 61 retail park in Warsaw. The complex will soon undergo a substantial refurbishment, including refurbishment of one of the buildings which comprises 11,800 sqm.

SachsenFonds, a company that manages investments in real estate and renewable energy sources, is changing its name. The new business name EURAMCO stands for European Asset Management Company and reflects its growing presence on international markets. The company was started in 1999 as one of the subsidiaries of Landesbank Sachsen. Today, the EURAMCO Group administers close to €4 billion in approximately 60 private investment funds. In Europe, EURAMCO has three offices: the headquarters in Ascheim near Munich (investment management in Western Europe), in Prague (investment management in Central and South-Eastern Europe) and in Warsaw. In addition, the company also operates on the Australian market with a branch office in Sydney.

Immofinanz recorded a significant increase in net profit to €105.3 million in the first half of 2017 (H1 2016: €-243.3 million). Net profit from continuing operations, i.e. excluding Russia, totalled €113.1 million (H1 2016: €-123.9 million). Rental income remained stable at €114.9 million (H1 2016: €115.9 million) despite the continuing sale of non-strategic properties. After an adjustment for new acquisitions, completions and sales (like-for-like), rental income rose by a sound 4.6% to €92.4 million. The results of asset management increased by 10.0% to €79.1 million, and financial results turned sharply positive at €104.4 million (H1 2016: €-58.0 million). This improvement resulted, above all, from positive valuation effects related to the investments in CA Immo and BUWOG.

JLL has been selected as the exclusive leasing agent for office and retail space located in Ghelamco's biggest investment in Poland to date, The Warsaw HUB. The complex will consist of three skyscrapers and it will offer approx. 113,000 sqm of multi-functional space.

It the first six months of 2017 GTC refinanced and concluded loans for almost €400 million through euro bonds offering, project loans and construction loans.

The industrial real estate market in Hungary hit the vacancy rate of 5.5% in the first half of 2017, which is the lowest number on record since it has been measured by the Budapest Research Forum (BRF). In total, less than 73,000 sqm space is currently vacant in the Budapest metropolitan area of the 1.95 million sqm total modern logistics area, and only four Class A buildings can offer more than 5,000 sqm contiguous warehouse space. The lack of available space is due to the strong absorption of the last few years, and at the same time there are still limited number of speculative projects in progress or have building permits, says Tamás Beck, Director of Industrial Agency at Colliers International Hungary.