The valuation department of the real estate consulting company Cushman & Wakefield Echinox evaluated in 2020 over 350 properties with a total value of €4.2 billion, while the research department provided consultancy to developers for the start of new projects with a market value of over €250 million.

Sale and leaseback transactions (S&LB) in Europe reached a total of €8.4 billion in 2020, 8.5% higher than the five year average, with the trend set to continue into 2021, according to Savills. Also in Poland, Savills sees an increasing number of companies willing to take the sale and lease back route mainly in industrial and retail sectors.

Manufacturers of facade products were successful in generating a little over PLN 3.6 billion (€800 million) in revenue in 2020 in spite of slower activity in the building construction sector, especially in the non-residential segment, according to the findings presented in the report released by research company Spectis entitled “Facades and facade materials in Poland 2021-2026”.

Amazon announced that will open three new offices in Romania and add a further 500 new permanent roles by the end of 2021. Amazon plans to open a new office in Timișoara and two new offices in Iași. The company has a total permanent workforce in Romania of more than 2,500.

The NIPÜF Group has opened two new warehouse units in the industrial park of Páty, near Budapest. The tenant for the facility, now expanded to 23,000 sqm, is Waberer’s-Szemerey Logisztika Kft.

Warsaw is one of the top ten cities for data centre development in the category of power cost and environmental risk, reveals a new report from Cushman & Wakefield. In addition to Warsaw, the top ten markets for data centres by industrial power cost include Montreal, Reykjavik, Johannesburg, Portland, Vancouver, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Atlanta, and Seattle, with some focusing on the use of renewables, thereby offering the lowest costs in the long term.

Panattoni is building another logistics centre in Western Pomerania - Panattoni Park Stargard. The development will comprise three warehouse buildings with a combined area of 172,000 sqm. The main advantage of the project will be its location just next to a transport corridor from Scandinavia to the north and a direct road to Berlin. The construction work is scheduled to start this year.

ANA Hotels, a company owned by businessman George Copos, announced an investment of €25 million in the Athenee Palace Hilton hotel in Bucharest.

CTP has completed the acquisition of 27.5 hectares of land close to Belgrade city centre and is moving plans forward to develop CTPark Belgrade Centre, which will become Serbia’s largest logistics and technology facility to date with over 130,000 sqm of gross lettable area. The new CTPark will be strategically located 6 km from Belgrade’s city centre, 2 km from New Belgrade, and 5 km from Airport Belgrade.  

Modern industrial stock in the Czech Republic grew by 314,800 sqm in H2 2020, indicating a mild (7%) decline in construction activity compared to H1. The total industrial inventory intended for lease according to the latest Savills report totalled 9.11 million sqm and 62% of the total inventory was held within the three largest submarkets of Prague (3.21 million sqm), the Pilsen region (1.33 million sqm) and the South Moravia region  (1.15 million sqm).