Cushman & Wakefield recently announced new appointments to its enhanced CEE leadership team. These appointments are to support regional client requirements with the best possible services. Key business areas, including office agency and industrial & logistics agency, have been reinforced with new CEE appointments.

Trei Real Estate GmbH just opened four new retail parks under the Vendo Park brand in Poland. The retail properties are located in Zielonka in the Masovian voivodeship, Piekary Śląskie in the Silesian voivodeship as well as in Koszalin and Myślibórz, two towns in the West Pomeranian voivodeship. Taken together, the new Vendo Parks have a gross lettable area of around 19,800 square metres and a total of 26 units, including several branches of brands like Dealz or Action which previously had no outlets in these towns and which therefore broaden the local retail spectrum. Overall, Trei invested c. €27 million in these properties.

Knight Frank has formally opened a dedicated office in Sofia, becoming a fully branded Knight Frank business from May 2021.

GTC has appointed Eszter Salamon to the position of Transactions Director. Her in-depth sector knowledge and experience in real estate and financial operations will boost GTC’s optimization and expansion goals. As Transactions Director, Eszter Salamon will be responsible for real estate transactions across all GTC markets as the investor plans completion of large-scale transactions in various markets in the upcoming period.

Austrian real estate group Immofinanz will start the refurbishment of shopping centre VIVO! Baia Mare on June 1. The works on the project located in northern Romania will cover more than 10,000 sqm, which is one third of the total surface of the centre. 

pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank (pbb) and Helaba have jointly underwritten an investment facility, totalling €130 million to refinance “Dock In Office Park” (4 buildings) in Prague for Crestyl Group. pbb and Helaba are acting as joint lead arrangers providing equal portions of the funding. pbb also acted as facility and security agent of the transaction.

UK-based property investor Resolution Property, a key partner of leading Chinese investment firm Fosun, has acquired its third office building in Budapest. The 16,270 sqm BC 140 building, located on the Váci Road office corridor, has been sold by German asset management company DWS.

In early May, developer Mint Investments began preparatory works on the Metropolis residential project in the centre of Bratislava. Local lender Tatra banka has been selected by the company to provide a loan of €42 million for the construction of the project. The planned completion date of the project is Q4 2023.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, warehouse take-up hit a record high of 1.6 million sqm, reveals an industrial market summary for Q1 2021 released by global real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield. The strongest leasing activity was reported in Poznań, the Warsaw area, Upper Silesia and Central Poland.

According to Colliers, CEE 2021 year-end investment volumes are likely to reach similar levels to 2020. CEE economies are expected  to accelerate  throughout 2021 and 2022, at an average pace of ca. 4.3% annually