In the first half of the year, Poland ranked second in Europe for net leased warehouse space. Demand for warehouses is steady and further investments continue to be made on the market. A new 7R City Flex Last Mile Logistics project will be built at Graniczna Street in Wrocław. PIKA, a company which specializes in the outsourcing of document management, processing and distribution, has chosen 7R which will prepare a high-bay warehouse space adapted to the strict standards of document storage. The general contractor of the 7R City Flex Wrocław Airport facility is Atlas Ward Polska.

The amendment to the Construction Law in Poland came into force on 19 September. Changes include a division of project documentation, organization of the provisions which specify what works require a building permit, and legislation on unauthorized construction, and in the opinion of experts from JLL, ought to be of benefit to investors, developers and construction companies operating on the Polish market.

Most hotels in Budapest will see their revenues decrease by more than 70% compared to 2019 this year, while hotels outside the capital expect 20% to 40% lower revenues, according to a representative survey commissioned by the Hungarian Hotel and Restaurant Association.

In the second quarter of 2020, Echo Investment generated a net profit of €2.3 million (PLN 10.4 million), which mainly resulted from the appreciation in the value of projects under construction and the handover of 222 apartments to buyers.

Local developer One Untied Properties announced that its One Verdi Park project, located in the Floreasca neighbourhood of northern Bucharest, will focus mainly on exclusive residential units. The developer’s initial plan included a 17-floor office tower, offering 21,000 sqm of commercial space, alongside a residential tower. One Verdi Park is scheduled for completion in Q4 2021.

Czech investment group Portiva and Micronix have acquired the Central Kladno shopping centre in Brno from Crestyl for approximately €74.8 million (CZK 2 billion).

AFI Europe Group contracted a €170 million loan from a consortium of banks consisting of Erste Bank Group, pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank, and Banca Comerciala Romana (BCR) to acquire NEPI Rockcastle’s office portfolio of in Romania.

The condition of the Kraków office sector has been defined by successive records in recent years. It is the largest regional office market in Poland, the second city after Warsaw, which in 2017 crossed the one million sqm threshold, and the main location for BPO/SSC companies in Central and Eastern Europe. However, the global pandemic, which affected all segments of the economy, undoubtedly also affected the office sector. How? According to JLL’s latest report, in the first half of the year, demand for offices in Kraków was about 15% lower than H1 2019. In addition, the increase in remote working has prompted some employers to reorganize their offices.

Approximately 1.22 million new residencies were built in Romania between 1990 and 2019, representing only 13.4% of the total dwellings stock calculated by the National Institute of Statistics, so the residential stock is mainly composed of apartments built under the communist regime, having a low degree of comfort in most cases, according to an analysis realised by Cushman & Wakefield Echinox real estate consulting company.

JLL has advised SLS Cargo, a transport and logistics company, in a lease transaction of 15,500 sqm of warehouse space in P3 Bucharest A1, located approximately 13 km west of Bucharest’s city centre. The new location is consolidating under one roof the logistic operations of SLS Cargo located around Bucharest.