Real estate advisor Avison Young has announced Wesley Thomson has joined the firm as Director of ESG, UK & Europe, to lead ESG strategy in the region.

Real estate investor and fund manager, Cromwell Property Group acting on behalf of CEREIT, has leased 17,500 sqm of office space to two Santander Group businesses at the Business Garden Poznań in Poland.

Work has been underway for more than ten years on a major planning document for Prague - the new zoning plan. Its elaboration has cost the capital city CZK 135 million so far, while the assessment and elaboration of changes cost CZK 181 million. According to the city's statistics, 367 amendments are submitted annually, a number that the new metropolitan plan should significantly reduce. The new plan is also expected to unlock up to 15 areas where there is currently a building closure. If the metropolitan plan is approved as proposed, it could begin to take effect as early as 2023 and could unlock the construction of up to 150,000 new flats. The public now has 66 days to comment on the plan, local daily E15.cz reports.

The asset management arm of Hungarian developer Market Group has signed a €65 million loan agreement with Raiffeisen Bank to finance a huge mixed-use project in a prestigious district of Budapest, not far from the embankment of the river Danube. A Class A office complex and a boutique hotel offering 127 rooms will be completed by 2023. 

Anchor Grup has kicked off the development of Select Residences, a new residential complex that will be developed in Bucharest following an investment of €40 million.  

Penta Real Estate has sold three real estate projects in Bratislava. The buyer is former Penta co-owner Jozef Oravkin, who left the group at the end of 2021 to set up his development and investment company, Penta announced in a press release.

Geopolitical tensions hurt demand for commercial property, appetite for property development, financing conditions and property investment decisions over the short run, the Hungarian National Bank (MNB) reports.

Hundreds of flats are to be built in Prague by RSBC Group. The company wants to implement a CZK 1 billion project in Prague's Vysočany district to convert an old vacuum cleaner factory into 243 apartments. RSBC is going into the project with developer Masák & Partner, online daily E15.cz reports.

The Central & Eastern European real estate market has registered an investment volume of €2.8 billion in Q1 2022, up 44% year-on-year. By volume, the lion’s share of the deals was realised in Poland (59%) and the Czech Republic (32%). Cushman & Wakefield has summed up the investment market in the CEE region.

Companies in the IT&C sector had a share of 32% in Bucharest’s office lease market in Q1 and generated 93.6% of new leasing transactions in regional cities such as Cluj-Napoca, Iași, Timișoara and Sibiu.