Erste Group Bank AG and Banco Santander S.A. announced that they have entered into an agreement for Erste Group to acquire a 49% stake in Santander Bank Polska Group S.A. for PLN 584 per share (approximately €6.8 billion) and a 50% stake in Santander Towarzystwo Funduszy Inwestycyjnych S.A. for approximately €0.2 billion from Santander Group. Together, this amounts to a total cash consideration of €7.0 billion.

Mateusz Dereszyński, Partner and Head of Banking and Finance at Eversheds Sutherland Polska, talked to Property Forum about the availability of financing in Poland, the importance of ESG for banks and the investment forecasts for 2025.

Real estate financing has been facing various challenges including the need for more bank and debt fund participation, better understanding and collaboration between Eastern and Western Europe, and last but not least exploring opportunities in new real estate sectors, such as data centres, and developing financing solutions for these emerging asset classes. Outlooks and solutions have been discussed at the financing panel of CEE Property Forum 2024 in Vienna.

With the first interest rate cuts in the Eurozone in a long time, optimism has also returned to the banking sector, as the participants of the banker panel at the CEE Property Financing Update 2024 conference unanimously concluded. However, it is limited by factors such as the uncertain political situation in the United States or the EU taxonomy, through which many older buildings may become troubled assets for their owners. The event, held at the end of September in Warsaw, was organised by Property Forum and law firm CMS.

Răzvan Nica, Managing Director, BuildGreen, spoke with Property Forum about the decarbonisation efforts of real estate companies and the growing appeal of green buildings for 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.