Panattoni has completed the construction of a forklift assembly plant for KION Group, one of the largest providers of intralogistics solutions and warehouse technologies worldwide comprising brands like Linde, STILL and Dematic. The facility, offering more than 44,000 sqm in Kołbaskowo near Szczecin, has been delivered in compliance with the most stringent environmental protection guidelines.

According to Savills, commercial property investment activity hit €2.92 billion across Poland in H1 2020, up by almost 5% on the same period in 2019. Despite COVID-19 challenges, it was the second-best result in the first half of a year on record. Savills anticipates that the pandemic’s impact will be noticeable in H2 2020, but the investment volume is unlikely to fall by more than 20% compared to last year’s all-time high.

Colliers International represented the Deichmann Group in the renegotiation of a lease agreement for 13,000 sqm of modern warehouse space in Prologis Park Wrocław III and in expanding by an additional 7,000 sqm. 

Total demand on the Budapest industrial market amounted to 202,610 sqm in Q2 2020, which is two times higher than the figure registered in the same period last year and 17% higher than the 4-year average Q2 volume. The Budapest Research Forum published its quarterly industrial market analysis

The first half of 2020 saw a record high investment activity with €3.5 billion of investment transactions closed on the Polish market. Although this was a 30% higher result compared to the corresponding period of last year, achieving a full-year result similar to the record-breaking €7.8 billion volume of 2019 may be difficult, according to Avison Young.

The top 50 largest technology companies in Romania, which realise software and digital solutions for group companies or for third parties, have increased their turnover and teams in Romania by approximately four times in the last ten years, reaching a cumulative turnover of €3 billion and over 50,000 employees in 2019, according to a Cushman & Wakefield Echinox analysis.

In the first half of 2020, Globalworth leased nearly 50,000 sqm of office space in its buildings in Poland. In the last 3 months, during very difficult time of the COVID-19 pandemic, the asset management & leasing department of the CEE office investor has signed contracts for a total area exceeding 28,000 sqm.

Romania's Real Estate Yearbook 2020 has published "The New Normal - Market Pulse Report, Romania", an exclusive property market update on Romania at end of the lockdown.

The industrial real estate sector in Romania will receive a boost thanks to an agreement signed between the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Warehouses De Pauw (WDP). The EBRD will provide WDP with a €150 million senior unsecured loan to support the company’s portfolio expansion in the country.

Banks in Europe are expecting a slow recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and while they forecast that hotel and retail loan portfolios will likely be hit more considerably than office and other real estate asset classes, the majority of them believes that the impairment will be in the range of a few percentage points up to 10% in total. These are some of the early findings from the COVID-specific section of this year's edition of KPMG's Property Lending Barometer, due to be published in autumn 2020.