Strategic joint ventures and sale and leaseback deals are some of the emerging structures that are gaining ground in the commercial real estate investment industry in the EMEA, shows a Colliers report.

At the beginning of August, ibis Styles Warszawa Airport with 124 rooms was launched in Warsaw, replacing Holiday Inn Express Airport opened in 2012 in the Poleczki Park complex with six office buildings. It is the 19th facility under the ibis Styles brand in Poland. The hotel is managed by the Accor network.

Cătălin Rotaru, CEO of Romanian company THETA Furniture & More, spoke to Property Forum about the company’s expansion strategy in the healthcare, HoReCa and education segments, as well as the competitive advantages of operating a custom-made furniture factory in Romania.

The neglected premises south of the National Bank of Slovakia building should soon change. A new development has been in the pipeline since 2018. Originally, the developer was Penta Real Estate. At the beginning of 2022, however, the plans in the locality were transferred to the portfolio of the new company Alto Real Estate, which was created by splitting off from Penta, yimba.sk reports.

Barbara Topolska, Country Manager for Poland at CPI Property Group has talked to Property Forum about the acquisition of Immofinanz, ESG contributions and the current financing conditions.

Czech real estate fund Investika's latest acquisition is the Royal Trakt Offices building in Warsaw. The roughly 150-year-old property in the centre of the capital city was bought by the fund from global real estate investor Patrizia SE. The acquisition was announced to Property Forum by Linklaters, the law firm that advised the real estate fund Investika during the acquisition. No further details of the transaction have been disclosed yet.

In the first two quarters of 2023, the volume of investment in the Polish real estate market was about €870 million. This result is 70% lower than the first half of 2022, when the Warsaw Hub office complex was sold for a record price. Investment in the warehouse sector accounted for more than half of the volume for H1 2023, with a total turnover of €438 million. Although this result represented a decrease of 34% compared to the first half of 2022, it was still higher than the 10-year average of €425 million, says JLL. 

Despite a supply gap and a low level of new completions (18,700 sqm in H1), there is a lot of optimism in the capital’s office market. Over 230,000 sqm is scheduled to be delivered in the next three years, which will significantly increase the amount of office space available to let. On the demand side meanwhile, we observe a relatively high occupier demand, whereby 2/3 of all agreements signed in H1 were new leases. AXI IMMO presents market data for the first half of 2023.

The floor area of newly completed office buildings in the Czech Republic fell by 20 percent last year. This year, we can expect a renewed increase, but this will be driven only by previously completed projects, with virtually no new office buildings being built this year, according to an analysis by facility management company ISS Czech Republic.

How does hyper-personalisation differ from personalisation which has ruled the retail market for years? The former leverages transactional and behavioural data and AI systems to foresee consumer needs more precisely, to reach out with a bespoke and personalised offer, and to deepen existing brand-customer relationships and build new ones. Although hyper-personalisation-based solutions in marketing strategies were initially intended for online shopping, this trend is now opening up new opportunities in multichannel retail. Cushman & Wakefield points out the growing role of such solutions for shopping centre retailers in an increasingly competitive market environment.