Higher construction costs and the unfavourable economic situation in Europe are impacting the future development of new offices in the region, especially in capital cities like Prague, Bratislava, Budapest and Bucharest.

Over the past decade, Hungarian real estate investors have successfully expanded outside of their home market. Firms such as Wing, Futureal, Adventum, Indotek and others have become major players in many European countries, mainly Poland and Romania. They managed to expand via acquisitions of both companies and projects. Part of their funds came from bond issues in Hungary within the Bond Funding for Growth Scheme of the National Bank of Hungary. We have prepared a timeline of the notable transactions and an overview of the market’s key players to provide a better understanding of this trend.

At €3.2 billion for Q1-Q3 2023, CEE investment activity is at a 10+ year low (down 59% year-on-year). The pricing gap between buyers’ and sellers' expectations remains a significant barrier to seeing volumes return to the 5 and 10-year average levels of €10-11 billion. However, real estate fundamentals in CEE remain fairly robust.  Lower levels of vacancy are being recorded and some good levels of rental growth in certain sectors have been noted, reveals Colliers in its latest report.

Half of the hotel investors in CEE already address ESG in their transaction due diligence, and 40% are in the process of including it, says Cushman & Wakefield in their newest report.

Accolade has expanded its management team with the addition of a new director responsible for the commercialisation of the entire group's portfolio. Joanna Sinkiewicz brings over 16 years of property industry experience and will be responsible for achieving the company's strategic goals.

Most retailers want to attract customers in-store through omnichannel, while e-commerce is not meeting the expectations of food retailers, concluded speakers in the rediscovering retail panel of CEE Property Forum 2023, held in Vienna last month.

Is the hotel market in CEE coming back strongly? According to the participants of a panel discussion at the CEE Property Forum 2023, the answer is „definitely yes”. The event took place at the end of September in Vienna.

P3 Group has released its condensed consolidated interim financial statements for the six-month period ended 30 June 2023. The company reported continued strong operational and financial performance. 

According to a survey conducted by Savills involving real estate investors with total Europe and Middle East assets under management (AuM) exceeding €500 billion, almost a third of investors are looking to adopt a more aggressive, value-added investment strategy over the next 12 months. This is up from 14% on last year’s survey, with only 28% expecting to deploy a more defensive strategy over the next 12 months, down from 55% last 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.