Europa Capital, represented by Savills, has concluded the sale of Hadovka Office Park in Prague to Wood & Company, a leading investment bank in Emerging Europe.

Panattoni Europe has sold another logistics facility, Panattoni Park Warsaw West V totalling 70,000 sqm. The buyer is a Dutch company controlled by one of the leading global real estate investment firms, for whom this is the first investment in the Polish warehouse market.

BNP Paribas Real Estate in CEE announced the appointment of Marcin Klammer as CEO, effective on June 4th, 2018.

The newest company in the structure of AG Capital, Park Lane Developments is planning the construction of a new office project nearby Paradise Center and Vitosha metro station in Sofia, Bulgaria. The building will have 24,000 sqm of leasable office space. The floors alignment in the new building will be 3,000 sqm and the project is expected to be finished at the end of 2020. The investment is worth €30 million.

The valuation department of the Cushman & Wakefield Echinox has evaluated over 700 properties in 2017 with a cumulative value of €3.1 billion, while estimating an increase of 33% of the valuation volume, to the level of €4 billion during this year.

On June 5, 2018, Immochan becomes Ceetrus. A symbol of the transformation that the company has been going through for two years, this new name is meant to embody its evolution from a commercial real estate company to a mixed-use real estate developer.

HubHub, the co-working concept from international real estate developer HB Reavis, has announced the opening its first space in Hungary by the end of this year. The debuting brand will occupy a total area of 2,400 sqm at the well-known downtown hub, Király street. The new office is not only about state-of-the-art space, but education, the pooling of talent and community building will also be strong pillars of its presence.

In Q1 2018, Warsaw’s vacancy rate fell to its lowest in five years while absorption amounted to 45,000 sqm, down by nearly 30% on the average observed over the last five years, according to Cresa.

Political risk seems not to be affecting the performance of CEE markets. Members of the investment panel at the Portfolio-RICS Valuation & Investment 2018 conference in Budapest are confident about the future of the market and view industrial/logistics and retail as the most attractive asset classes.

Valuers are often listed among the professionals most likely to be affected by technology but few believe that all of their tasks can be done by robots. Stewart Thomson, Country Head for the Czech Republic at BNP Paribas Real Estate shared his expectations for the investment market and the future of the valuation business.