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Uncertainty and volatility have been the two dominant trends shaping the commercial real estate market and buyer sentiment in recent months. However, according to the latest report from Cushman & Wakefield, the Polish market, whose fundamentals remain strong, is broadly expected to regain equilibrium. Change is being seen in the number and types of real estate transactions taking place – due to the constrained availability of safe prime assets for sale on the office market and high financing costs, investors seeking higher returns are turning their focus to higher-risk transactions. With retail footfall figures for large schemes back at satisfactory levels after the pandemic and attractive asset pricing, the retail market has become an interesting sector for bargain hunting. The warehouse and logistics sector continues to feature prominently on investors’ radars.

Poland’s industrial sector slowed in 2023, but the market hopes to rebound in 2024. After the peak of take-up and supply in the so-called COVID period falling in 2020-2022, the logistics and manufacturing market has returned in many values to those observed in 2018-2019, says Axi Immo. 

2023 was marked in Poland by a shrinking office development pipeline amid a continued focus on the optimisation of office footprints and overall office running costs. It was also another year in which both tenants and developers faced relatively high office fit-out costs. In addition, high borrowing costs were a drag on expansion, with caution being a key theme characterising the Polish office market, says Newmark.

The decline in investment volume, which has been recorded this year in all sectors of the commercial real estate market in Poland, is particularly visible in the office segment. Despite the relative recovery that was observed at the end of the summer, the total value of the transaction volume recorded in Q1-Q3 2023, amounted to only ca. €1.7 billion, with merely ca. €267 million allocated in office assets. However, in this time of slowdown, there is also room for success. Avison Young's investment team can boast of approximately one-third of completed transactions in this sector - both in terms of volume and number of transactions.

Investors in Poland are looking for market opportunities and value-add assets. Companies are optimizing their portfolios by putting up for sale properties that do not fit their new investment strategies, says Walter Herz. 

Cushman & Wakefield has released a summary of office market conditions in Warsaw. This year’s development activity is expected to fall to its lowest in nearly 25 years amid a record number of leases, falling vacancy rates and the continued upward pressure on rental growth. 

Cushman & Wakefield has released a summary of retail market conditions in Poland. Approximately 200,000 sqm is likely to be added to the market by the end of this year. Most of that total will be delivered in retail parks that account for 77% of the development pipeline, which will be consistent with the trend seen in recent years. Rental rates are on an upward year-on-year trajectory while the average vacancy rate in the largest Polish cities has dipped by 1.2 pp year-on-year. 

During the first half of 2023, investment activity remained low due to increased financial costs and an uncertain outlook. As a result, there was a need for more price discovery across all sectors. In Poland, we are witnessing a similar tendency in European countries and the United States, and one of these trends is a reduction in investment volume. The rise in interest rates had a significant impact on transaction valuations and investment activity, leading to a challenge in determining the size, speed, and duration of price adjustments. JLL experts presented an analysis of investors' activity in Poland in comparison to CEE countries.

Just ahead of the Expo Real investment fair in Munich, experts of Avison Young presented an overview of the current situation in the Polish commercial real estate market. 

In 2022, the value of transactions on the Polish commercial real estate market amounted to approximately € 5.8 billion, which showed that after the difficult years of the pandemic and the outbreak of conflict in the East, Poland turned out to be a stable market with a large group of investors interested in investing capital in our country and a wide range of attractive investment products. However, in the first half of 2023, we witnessed the previously expected investment slowdown. After six months of  2023, the total investment volume amounted to only around €800 million, which means a decrease of 70 per cent compared to the same period a year earlier, says Bartłomiej Zagrodnik, CEO of Walter Herz advisory agency.