After many long years Budapest once again had a booth at the world’s most important real estate expo, MIPIM. With this, Budapest at least partially returned to the investor marker, since traditionally every significant Central European city is represented by a booth. The Hungarian capital has not quite attained the investor attention that for example Warsaw has, but investor sentiment towards the Hungarian property market has improved noticeably recently, and this can be experienced in Cannes too.

According to CBRE’s 2016 EMEA Investor Intentions Survey almost half (48%) of all surveyed expect their purchasing activity to be higher than last year, compared with just 15% who expect to be less active buyers. 43% also expect their selling activity to increase, indicating a buoyant and liquid real estate investment market for the region in 2016.

South African Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) Redefine Properties is significantly broadening its offshore footprint via an initial 75% investment into Echo Investment’s 1.2 billion euro commercial platform comprising 18 properties in Poland.

In 2015 Skanska Commercial Development Europe signed final sale agreements for eleven office buildings located in three Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, achieving a total transaction volume of nearly 500 mln EUR for the year. Skanska is now compiling its sales portfolio for 2016 and continues to purchase land for new development projects.

As core European markets continue to become increasingly tight, the CEE region is attracting more capital and witnessing high levels of real estate investment activity.

Investment into Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (excluding Russia) for 2015 reached a historic high level at over €9.6 billion, representing a 20% increase year on year. Czech Republic and Poland put in a particularly strong performance, recording investment volumes of EUR 2.7 billion and EUR4 billion respectively.

International investor and developer, CTP, has successfully concluded the purchase of a portfolio of industrial real estate in Hungary. With this acquisition, CTP further increases its footprint in Central Europe, with a TRA exceeding 3,250,000 sqm as of January 2016.

Immofinanz has signed a contract with Blackstone for the sale of its entire logistics portfolio. The transaction covers all 36 logistics standing investments with approx. one million sqm of rentable space, which are located for the most part in Germany (24 properties) as well as in Hungary (5), Romania (3), Poland (2), Slovakia (1) and Russia (1). Blackstone will also purchase three development projects with approx. 65,000 sqm currently under construction in Hamburg (DE), Bucharest and Ploiesti (RO), which will be completed by Immofinanz, as well as land reserves. Blackstone will integrate all the assets into Logicor, its European logistics platform.

Global commercial real estate (CRE) investment reached US$407 billion in H1 2015, the strongest first half to a year since 2007, and up 14 per cent year-over-year, according to the latest research from global property advisor CBRE Group, Inc.

Corporate real estate (CRE) investment within Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) increased in Q3 by 14%, to a record €2.297 billion, with total yearly volume up 6% according to the most recent report on CEE property investment from CBRE.