Occupier and investment sentiment continues to be positive across Central and Eastern Europe according to the RICS Commercial Property Monitor for Q4 2016. Hungary and the Czech Republic remain the most upbeat markets, with Bulgaria and Croatia also gaining momentum. In Romania the pace of growth seems to be slowing down, although sentiment and projections continue to be broadly positive.

2016 was a record-breaking year for the Polish investment market and had the best investment performance since the financial crisis in 2009. With over €4.5 billion transacted in 2016, Poland remains the stand out performer across the CEE region, CBRE reports in its latest in research. 

Total commercial real estate investment across CEE (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) reached €4.4bn in Q4 2016, a 27% increase on Q4 2015. This took full year volumes for 2016 to just over €11bn, an 11% increase on 2015 (€9.9bn), bucking the wider trend across Europe and on the continent where volumes shrank year-on-year. Cushman & Wakefield Czech Republic predicts a further growth of the region. 

In most Central and Eastern European countries the commercial property market is heavily concentrated in the capital city and modern offices in secondary or tertiary cities are virtually non-existent. Luckily, that is not the case in the Czech Republic, where there are cities outside of Prague, most notably Brno, that offer attractive opportunities for international companies. Czech-based developer CTP invited us for the opening ceremony of the new Courtyard by Marriott hotel and showed us the city’s property market.

2016 reached the volume of €11.8bn in investment markets across Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, according to a research report by Colliers International. Aside from Poland, investment flows in 2017 will be close to or higher than 2016’s.  The retail sector might see continued rental growth and high investment levels across the region.

The sound global and domestic investment climate generated a major push in property investment activity in Hungary reaching the second highest ever registered annual volume of €1.7 billion in 2016, i.e. 133% up from the previous year. The most popular type of assets were offices with a share of 56%, followed by retail at 25%, while industrial deals accounted for 11% of the overall volume.

Total real estate investment volume in the Czech Republic exceeded €3.7 billion in 2016, CBRE revealed. The most notable transactions in 2016 were the sale of P3 Logistics Parks, the Park and Florentinum, with 67 transactions being mediated on the Czech market in total. 

According to JLL, almost €900 million were invested into Romanian property in 2016, 35% more than in the previous year. 2016 has been a record breaking year at a country level all over CEE with the highest ever volumes recorded in the Czech Republic and Slovakia and second best ever results recorded in Poland, Hungary and the SEE region.

During Q4 2016 the total commercial real estate investment transaction volume reached some €270 million in Hungary, pushing the 2016 volume to above €1.7 billion, the highest annual figure since 2007– according to JLL Hungary’s latest preliminary statistics. According to JLL Hungary’s preliminary statistics office transactions generated roughly 48% of the annual investment volumes, followed by retail (27%) and logistics (14%). Hungarian investors generated the highest share of the annual volumes (30%) followed by US-based (20%) and German (14%) investors.

Strong demand across all investment sectors is expected to continue into 2017 in the Czech Republic and the €3 billion boundary could be exceeded once again. Retail is likely to become the most popular asset class next year, followed by offices and industrial. CBRE has released the Czech Republic Real Estate Market Outlook 2017.