Banks in Europe are expecting a slow recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and while they forecast that hotel and retail loan portfolios will likely be hit more considerably than office and other real estate asset classes, the majority of them believes that the impairment will be in the range of a few percentage points up to 10% in total. These are some of the early findings from the COVID-specific section of this year's edition of KPMG's Property Lending Barometer, due to be published in autumn 2020.

There are only four construction projects with a unit value in excess of PLN 3 billion (€670 million), excl. VAT, currently underway in Poland. The combined value of these projects, commonly referred to as megaprojects, is almost PLN 17 billion (€3.8 billion), excl. VAT. This is not a lot, given the fact that projects worth a total of nearly PLN 300 billion (€67 billion) are in the pipeline.

Results from the INREV Quarterly Index for the first quarter of 2020 reveal initial signs of the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the European real estate industry, with the lowest quarterly performance since Q4 2012.

CEE’s highly skilled and lower cost workforce, its well-established track record and competitiveness in industrial production coupled with the fact that the region has enabled manufacturers to generate higher levels of economic output at disproportionately lower operating costs is a compelling case for continued FDI into the region, according to Colliers International.

As the manufacturing sector begins to reopen around the world, new trends are emerging in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research by Cushman & Wakefield.

The construction industry in most of Southeastern Europe will be bruised by the pandemic effects this year, causing a drop in construction outputs. The two exceptions are Croatia and Bulgaria where civil engineering could compensate for the losses elsewhere. Already in 2021, we are likely to see positive growth rates in all 5 countries, according to the Eastern European Construction Forecasting Association

The Czech Republic came within the top ten countries around the world again this year in Cushman & Wakefield’s annual ranking based on the criteria such as operating costs including labour and the rate of economic and political risk. The country has regularly ranked among the best destination for manufacturers seeking to locate their operations since 2016 when it was included in the chart for the first time. The ability to bounce back after the coronavirus crisis was rated for the first time this year and the Czech Republic succeeded in this respect as well.

Poland’s real estate investment volume for the first half of 2020 has reached €2.9 billion which is the second-best H1 result in history. €710 million was invested in offices alone during the “pandemic quarter” with the industrial sector registering its best-ever H1 result. JLL analysed H1 2020 real estate investment transactions in Poland.  

Warsaw is among the top 10 European cities for the fintech sector. According to Savills, which prepared the ranking, the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the digitalisation of the banking sector and Poland provides a favourable environment for fintechs to expand.

Solid economic fundamentals will be instrumental in the fast rebuilding of asset values in Poland. If they are not weakened by the country’s overregulation and fiscal policy, and the government temporarily helps entrepreneurs maintain liquidity, investor confidence in most commercial real estate sectors should fully recover by the end of this year, says Bolesław Kołodziejczyk, PhD, Head of Research & Advisory, Cresa Poland.