Due to the prolonged COVID-19 epidemic, some tenants on the Warsaw office market are postponing relocations, looking for sublessees or downsizing their offices. According to the Cresa Polska report "Occupier Economics: Office market in Warsaw in the third quarter of 2020", office take-up amounted to 113,000 sqm in Q3 2020, which is the weakest quarterly result in the last 10 years. Warsaw’s office stock reached 5.8 million sqm.

Experts of the international investors’ panel at SEE Property Forum 2020, a hybrid event organised by Property Forum and RICS, agreed that Romania’s property investment market has matured a lot in recent years but the lack of liquidity is still an issue. They also confirmed that COVID-19 makes it difficult to forecast the future direction of the market and it makes certain market players, especially banks, more cautious.

The impacts of COVID-19 are becoming visible on Prague’s office market with a rapid decrease of net demand and the postponement of several completions of new office projects. At the same time, the share of sublease deals within the total take-up increased from around 1% in previous quarters to 7%. The Prague Research Forum announced the office market figures for the third quarter of 2020.

Impact Developer & Contractor has started the works on the first 3 blocks of the Boreal Plus residential compound in the north of Constanța. The enterprise contract worth €9.5 million was concluded with the construction company Premium Invest Concept.

GTC has expanded its portfolio of green projects. The Matrix A and Matrix B office buildings in Zagreb have both been granted LEED Platinum certifications. Thus, 80% of all GTC’s office properties now bear an eco-friendly label. 

CA Immo successfully placed a €350 million fixed rate senior unsecured green bond with a 5-year maturity and an annual coupon of 1.0%. The issuance was oversubscribed more than 5.4 times at final terms with strong demand by more than 150 investors.

Demand in Q1-Q3 2020 was 35% lower on Warsaw’s office market than in the corresponding period last year, while another trend is a growing volume of office space available for sublease.  JLL summarised the Warsaw office market at the end of Q3 2020.

Immofinanz has appointed Savills as sole property manager for its portfolio of seven office buildings in Prague, Czech Republic, with effect from January 2021. The total floor area of the assets is approximately 123,000 sqm.

Hungarian property investor and developer Wing is expanding its East Gate Business Park, located next to Budapest, with a new 9,200 sqm hall. The handover of the building, which is 30% pre-leased, will take place in the second half of 2021.

Panattoni is to expand its warehousing assets near Warsaw. Already the developer has 176,000 sqm of industrial space at its disposal in the village of Janki and it has just announced the creation of more. The company has purchased a further 3.14 ha next to the S8 for further development.