Immofinanz has purchased the remaining 50% of the Na Příkopě 14 building in Prague from Lordship and become the sole owner. The revitalised historic prime high street building, located on the prestigious Prague shopping street in the city centre, is almost 100% occupied. The parties to this transaction have agreed not to disclose the purchase price.

2018 was a record-breaking year for the Polish commercial property investment market. The total volume of transactions completed in the office, retail, warehouse and logistics as well as hotel sectors came to nearly €7.3 billion, which represents a y-o-y growth of approx. 41%. This is a result not previously recorded on the Polish market, according to a report by BNP Paribas Real Estate Poland.

Cushman & Wakefield has mapped the office property market in detail and made a chart of the largest owners and the most active developers of office buildings in the main markets of the Czech Republic. At this point, there is 4.23 million sqm of office space in the Czech Republic. CPI Group is the biggest owner with 22 properties taking up 5% of the total area. The three biggest office owners in Prague control about 15% of the entire market. Penta Investments has been the most active developer over the course of the last ten years.

Globalworth Poland has taken further steps to manage its Polish real estate portfolio in-house. Between December and January, the company took on the property management of Lumen and Skylight in Warsaw, West Gate in Wrocław, the A4 Business Park in Katowice and Tryton Business House in Gdańsk. Since the company entered the market, Globalworth has gradually internalized the property management of a series of buildings and now handles directly 250,000 sqm in only about one year, which constitutes almost 60% of its portfolio in Poland.

Real estate investors tend to keep doing things in exactly the way as they did in the year before. For a long time this worked out well, but to stay in the race, one must make use of the data available. Bouke-Pieter van Dijk, Director of Retail Atlas Schweiz and one of the speakers of the upcoming RICS European Retail Conference talked to Property Forum about his company.

AEW’s Europe City Retail Fund has acquired a 3,000 sqm mixed-use building in the centre of Budapest for around €18 million. The sellers of the high street building were the Pallas Athéné Foundations, created by the Central Bank of Hungary.

Conseq Group’s Conseq Realitní investment fund has bought the A7 Office Center in Prague from Revetas. The purchase price has not been disclosed. The 16,000 sqm building is located in the Czech capital’s Holešovice district. The list of tenants includes Czech News Center, Ahold Czech Republic, DM Drugerie and Megapixel.

Mitiska REIM, a specialist investor in European retail parks, announced a major new strategic partnership with Karuzela Holding. Under the terms of the agreement, Mitiska REIM and Karuzela will form a joint venture in Poland, and Mitiska REIM’s FRI 2 fund will acquire a 50% holding in 2 retail parks and 2 gallerias owned by Karuzela, with a total gross leasable area (GLA) of 35,600 sqm, and both parties will co-develop 4 additional projects with a total GLA of approximately 60,000 sqm.

Hines and Zeus Capital Management announced the completion of the sale and purchase of the Graffit building in Warsaw. The property owned by Hines Russia & Poland Fund (HRPF) was sold to TAN Poland Sp. z o.o., a company managed by Zeus Capital Management. This is Zeus’ first investment in Poland and it is part of its commercial real estate platform dedicated to Central and South East Europe.

New retail supply amounted to approximately 420,000 sqm in 2018, pushing Poland’s total retail stock up by 3% to 14.7 million sqm. Nearly 30% of the new supply was completed in small-scale shopping centres and retail parks (sized below 20,000 sqm). Extensions of existing shopping centres and retail parks delivered approximately 60,000 sqm of new retail space. Cushman & Wakefield presented a summary of the Polish retail market in 2018.