In a video interview recorded at CEE Property Investment Update 2026 in Warsaw, Georg Blaschke, Head of Real Estate Finance CEE & Benelux at Helaba, shares his perspective on how banks are reassessing property risk, the outlook for lending conditions and which sectors continue to attract financing in Poland.
How are banks in the CEE region reassessing property risk, looking ahead to the next two years?
Poland is probably a bit of a special case in this respect, because the market has actually been quite stable. Over the past two years, I have not seen any real problems or scarcity of lending. If you compare investment volumes to 2019, when transactions were around €7 billion, those volumes were fully financed. The same was true in 2023 and 2024.
There has been sufficient lending liquidity in the market to finance all completed investment transactions as well as development projects. From that perspective, Poland has remained very resilient.
Do you expect financing conditions to change in the near term?
I don’t think so. The environment in Poland is very stable. Construction activity is relatively low, rental rates are rising, and interest rates have been steady. Over the past two years, five-year interest rates have been around 2.5%. If you look at longer-term rates — 10 or 15 years — they are still only around 2.6% or 2.7%.
This points to a very stable financing environment, and I don’t expect that to change in 2026. In fact, when I look at my budget for 2026, it is higher than what we had in 2025 and 2024. When I speak to our competitors in Poland, I hear a similar approach. So I don’t see any issues with lending liquidity in 2026.
Which types of projects are most attractive in the current market?
For the past 20 years that we have been active in Poland, we have been financing office, retail and logistics projects. All three sectors are performing very well at the moment, so these remain our core focus areas.
We also started financing PRS projects in 2017–2018, becoming the first German lender active in this segment in Poland. This market is still growing — not as fast as we might like, but it is developing steadily. PRS is, therefore, definitely another sector where we want to remain active in 2026.
How would you describe Polish real estate in three words?
Fascinating. Dynamic. Stable.
