Last year few would have anticipated that commercial real estate investment volumes for Hungary would even reach €1 billion this year, yet now it seems sure that 2016 will be a record year on the investment market. Over €910 million have been transacted in the first half of the year and an astonishing amount of new deals were announced in the second part of 2016, especially in the last few weeks. Looking at the transactions that took place this year, two things seem certain: one is that several new entrants made purchases in 2016 and the other is that market transparency still has a long way to go. 

Cushman & Wakefield, representing CIB Bank, have facilitated the transfer of the former CIB Bank Headquarter offices on Szabadság square, Central Budapest to a German investor as of December 1, 2016. 

Skanska has sold the Nordic Light office building in Budapest, Hungary, to the real estate funds of Erste Alapkezelő Zrt. – one of the subsidiaries of Erste Asset Management GmbH. The value of the transaction is €67 million. The transaction has been recorded in December, with the transfer of the property scheduled for the first quarter of 2017. Skanska has also started its newest office development in the Hungarian capital.

M7 Real Estate, the pan-European investor and asset manager, announces that it has made two further acquisitions for the recently launched CEREF I fund. The acquisitions in Croatia and Hungary totalling €14 million mark M7's first entry into both countries.

CBRE has published its inaugural Understanding European Technology Clusters report, highlighting the vibrancy and rapid growth of Europe’s tech sector. The report analyses the characteristics of tech clusters and explores future opportunities among high-performing, and emerging, tech cities across Europe. 

FLE GmbH, a company of the LFPI group, has acquired its first property in CEE from an international institutional seller. The acquisition relates to the office building Office Garden I in the Southern Buda area of Budapest, that is 93 percent leased and offers 16,000 square meters of leasable space. The seller was represented by JLL.

CPI Hungary has sold its V188 office building and an adjacent development land (V190), both located on Budapest’s Váci corridor, to a Hungarian investment group. CPI Hungary plans to use the funds for increasing the value of its current portfolio and to implement new green investments. 

Belgian real estate developer Atenor announced the sale of Váci Greens Building C to Czech investment fund ZFP realitní fond (managed by ZFP Investments). This building is one of the three buildings completed by Atenor within its Váci Greens development in Budapest. Building C, completed in June 2015, comprises 18,500 sqm of office space, fully let to General Electric. 

During the Q1-Q3 2016 period total commercial real estate investment transaction volume reached €1.5 billion in Hungary, nearly double the 2015 total volume, a testimony to the sharp liquidity increase – according to JLL Hungary’s latest statistics.The outstanding performance of the market was backed by the strong market fundamentals and the growing investor appetite for the high yielding Hungarian assets. Approximately 45% of the volume was generated by the office asset class followed by retail (29%) and logistics (14%). The remaining deals included a mix of hotel assets and properties for redevelopment purposes.

Six companies – Horizon Development, Wing, CBRE, CA Immo, JLL and TriGranit – were presented with Portfolio Property Awards at Property Investment Forum 2016 in Budapest. Portfolio acknowledged the Project of the Year, the Concept of the Year, the Leasing Transaction of the Year and the Investment Transaction of the Year for the seventh time.