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

MidPoint71, an office building developed by Echo Investment in Wrocław, will become the new head office of the Business Service Centre of 3M. The tenant will move into the new location in the first quarter of 2022.

Romania recorded new real estate investments worth €85 million in the first quarter of 2021, down 42% year-on-year, in line with the lower results of other markets in Central and Eastern Europe, according to a report by Colliers. 

Romania’s Vox Property Group says it secured €19.5 million in funding from CEC Bank that will be used to refinance other loans and to support ongoing projects in the country. 

Arcadis has published the annual results of the International Comparison of Construction Costs which demonstrates that the building industry has shown its resistance worldwide during the pandemic. Many governments took advantage of fiscal stimuli to support their economies, which has reflected an increase in infrastructure investment of the public sector. Within CEE, Vienna (#30) has by far the highest construction costs, followed by Zagreb (#64), Bucharest (#65), Sofia (#66), Prague (#66), Warsaw (#70), Belgrade (#72) and Krakow (#75).