Blackstone announced the launch of its pan-European last mile logistics real estate company, Mileway. The new company owns and operates approximately 1,000 logistics assets that have been acquired by real estate funds managed by Blackstone over the last several years.

French-based investment fund AEW has sold the America House office building in Bucharest to the real estate investment division of Morgan Stanley in association with a group of Israeli investors highly active on the real estate market, represented by David Hay

Cushman & Wakefield has been appointed as the exclusive agent to commercialise extra space available following the downsizing of its big-box hypermarkets to a smaller compact hypermarket format.

Hines Global Income Trust has acquired a modern logistics park with an area of over 30,000 square meters near Gdańsk. The property purchased on 24 September 2019 from the investment platform The SEGRO European Logistics Partnership (SELP) will be managed by Hines Polska.

JLL will be responsible for leasing commercial space in Airport City Gdańsk. Construction of the complex, whose usable area will ultimately total approximately 120,000 sqm, will start at the end of this year.

Element Industrial announced the completion of the first phase at ELI PARK 1 Chitila. The warehouse, with an area of 20,000 sqm is rented to Turkish-based appliances producer, Arctic. The company has already begun its operations in the new logistics space.

The value of output generated by the Polish construction industry has reached an all-time high level on the back of several years’ investment upturn and it is expected to come close to €59 billion (PLN 250 billion) in 2020. In nominal terms, the market’s value is impressive, but it is less so when one looks at the volumes of construction work being performed and building materials used. A noteworthy fact is that the growth in the market’s value is boosted by rising prices of building materials and higher labour costs.

French AEW Europe and Hungarian Indotek Group have concluded an agreement regarding the acquisition of the Promenada shopping centre in Târgu Mureș, Romania. The 50,000 sqm building’s tenants include Auchan, Leroy Merlin, Decathlon, H&M, Cinema City, LC Waikiki, New Yorker, Hervis and Media Galaxy. Indotek Group plans to renovate and modernize the whole building and plans further acquisitions to strengthen its presence on the Romanian commercial real estate market.

User expectations have changed significantly during the past couple of years and this is a challenge that most landlords do not take lightly. Mátyás Gereben MRICS, Country Manager of CPI Hungary talked to Property Forum about the changing needs of office tenants and the shopping centre of the future.

According to the panellists of the investment panel at CEE Property Forum 2019, sellers have become more cautious compared to last year when they thought the market was reaching the peak and they were going to get the best price possible. Prices, however, have gone up significantly in the last 12 months as the general lack of quality investment products persists in the region.