ARTICLES LABELLED WITH TAG banks

Deutsche Pfandbriefbank AG (pbb), a leading European specialist bank for commercial real estate finance, expects its results for the current financial year to be significantly higher than in 2023. 

The beginning of February has brought a sharp fall in bank rates in the Czech Republic, and housing loans are thus the cheapest in more than a year and a half, E15.cz reports.

Panattoni presented its investment financing for 2023. In Poland, the company obtained 29 bank loans for development projects worth a combined sum of more than €800 million.

The past year has probably been the weakest since 2009 in terms of the volume of investments in real estate, both in the Czech Republic and throughout Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). This conclusion has resulted from the KPMG Property Lending Barometer survey. It has involved representatives of 48 banks from 10 CEE countries.

The “2% Safe Mortgage” housing loan subsidy programme introduced by Poland's Law and Justice (PiS) party has caused housing prices in Poland to shoot into space. However, the new government in Warsaw cannot abolish it, as a spike in demand could shake up the entire domestic property development industry.

Inflation across Europe is cooling down but interest rates are still at historical highs. Leading bankers and investment experts discussed at last month's CEE Property Forum 2023 in Vienna how their financing strategies were adapting.

The largest transaction on the Czech office market this year took place in Prague. A listed building in one of Prague's most expensive streets, Na Příkopě, was bought from Commerzbank Group by Trinity Bank. The price of the transaction has not been officially disclosed, but it is likely to exceed CZK 2 billion (€82 million), making it this year's largest transaction on the office building market, writes online daily newstream.cz.

Despite the turbulent economic situation, banks are readily lending money to the commercial real estate segment, with warehouses being their top choice. The industrial investor Accolade is one of the most willingly financed warehouse portfolio holders in Poland. The company benefits from over €500 million in bank loans, 40% of which has been acquired since February 2020. At the same time, in the Czech Republic, the company has signed a loan agreement with a club of banks for €137.5 million. It is the largest ever loan provided for a single industrial rental property in the CEE region.

Although real estate development, investment and lending to the sector have taken a beating due to the pandemic's effects on the global economy, according to the results of the latest edition of KPMG’s Property Lending Barometer, property lending has gained an increased importance for banks in 2021, as on the one hand real estate loan portfolios are deteriorating, and, on the other, market conditions continue to gradually improve. Moreover, the tougher times mean that lending institutions within the region are able to pick and choose what types of developments and investments to grant loans to under stricter terms and conditions.

The high inflation rate that averages at 5% across Central and Eastern Europe and its impact on the property sector was debated during the financing panel of CEE Property Forum 2021, Property Forum's first real-life event back in Vienna since 2019 which was attended by over 400 people coming from countries all over the region and beyond.