CBRE announced the appointment of Clare Sheils as Managing Director of CBRE in the Czech Republic effective 15th March 2020. Clare Sheils succeeds the current Managing Director, Richard Curran, who – after a highly successful career spanning 16 years – has decided to leave the business and pursue other interests and career challenges.

The industrial property market in the western and north-western areas of Romania is growing rapidly, after the stock has doubled in just four years, becoming the second-largest market after Bucharest. Stock is expected to exceed 700,000 sqm this year, according to CBRE data. The company recently advised the lease of a total area of about 18,000 sqm of industrial space within the Timisoara Industrial Park II project, which thus became fully occupied.

Although there has been a slight decline in total office demand, CBRE leased 1 million square meters of office space last year in the CEE region. For Romania’s office market, 2019 was a prolific year, with the modern stock surpassing 3 million sqm and, finally, with a reversal of classes composition: Class A became the preponderance with 53% of the total. As the main market of the country, Bucharest faced a strong demand, approximatively 386,000 sqm being leased in 2019 – an impressive 19% growth compared with 2018

The volume of real estate investments in Romania exceeded €1 billion in 2019, totalling about €1.06 billion, 7% higher than the figure registered in 2018, according to CBRE Romania’s data. The volume reached in 2019 also marks a record of the last five years in terms of investment transactions on the Romanian real estate market.

The stock of modern office space in Bucharest reached 3.16 million square meters at the end of the third quarter of 2019, in the context of a population of 2.11 million inhabitants and an unemployment rate of 1.3 %, according to the Romania Office Destinations report, conducted by CBRE Romania.

Cavatina Holding has signed a sale agreement for the Equal Business Park office complex in Kraków. The complex comprises four buildings offering a total of over 60,000 sqm of Class A office space. The buyer is a joint venture managed by Apollo-Rida Poland.

CBRE assisted the Hexagon group of companies in selling a portfolio of three office buildings in Cluj-Napoca. By adding this new transaction, the volume of real estate investments reaches almost €200 million in Cluj-Napoca, thus maintaining its attractivity after Bucharest, in terms of real estate investment.

CBRE represented Adventum International in the acquisition of the KöKi Terminal shopping centre in South Pest. CBRE also provides property management and exclusive retail leasing and advisory services for the €18 million (6 billion HUF) renewal project of the 66,000 sqm GLA shopping centre

CBRE advised flexible space provider Regus in the opening of its 12th centre at Sun Business Center project, located within Sun Plaza shopping centre. The decision of Regus responds to the demand for flexible spaces from companies in the northern half of the city, in order to provide an alternative for the employees living in the southern area, their share being estimated at 50% of the total staff.

According to a new report by Panattoni and CBRE, the attitude towards the future in the logistics, production and trade industries changed slightly compared to last year. The Optimism Level Index in Logistics and Supply Chain in Poland for 2019-2020 was determined at an average level of 49 points, which is lower than the result obtained last year (57.4). Logistics companies are again more positive about the future (53.9 points) than production and trade enterprises using logistics services (44 points). Despite this change in mood, as many as 7 out of 10 institutions assess the costs of supply chain operations in Poland as lower than the EU average, and 6 out of 10 believe that Poland is competitive as a place of investment - both statistics have increased since last year.