Demand for alternative residential investments, mainly student housing and residential-for-rent, is clearly growing in Central & Eastern Europe with countries like Poland offering great opportunities for developers. More than 130 real estate professionals came together at the first-ever Alternative Investment Forum, organized by CEE event and intelligence hub Property Forum, in Warsaw.

Prologis has appointed Paweł Sapek as Regional Head Central Europe, a role in which he is responsible for maintaining strong team leadership, identifying new opportunities and steering the region towards new paths of development. Sapek is now responsible for overseeing the company's entire CE portfolio across Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, with a total area of 4.2 million square meters. In addition, he will run the Polish branch of Prologis and directly supervise operations in Hungary.

Garbe Industrial Real Estate GmbH, one of the leading specialists for logistics and industrial properties in Germany and other countries in Europe, is expanding its footprint in Central Eastern Europe. Martin Polák, a former managing director at Prologis, will join Garbe as Managing Director CEE and will be in charge of the further expansion in the region.

Carpinus Holding GmbH has acquired a total of 12,000,000 shares in Immofinanz, corresponding to a shareholding of approximately 10.71%. The indirect shareholders of Carpinus Holding GmbH are Peter Korbacka and RPR Privatstiftung (Ronny Pecik).

In 2019, five out of the ten European markets with the highest logistics rental growth were located in CEE. Last year, net effective rents rose more than 5% for Europe as a whole, the highest level ever recorded. This growth is driven by headline rent growth as, after several years of concession reductions, many markets across Europe are currently at very low levels of incentives such as free rent. Prologis published its Logistics Rent Index.

2019 saw the completion of 8 Prologis buildings in CEE with a total area of 189 000 square meters, whereas development starts totalled 200,000 square meters. Prologis shared it 2019 results and achievements for Central Europe.

In 2020, student housing markets in Europe are expected to grow stronger with Poland becoming one of the most attractive countries at a continental level. Stefan Kolibar, Head of Marketing at Bonard talked to Property Forum about the trends driving this segment regionally and globally.

Erste Group Bank AG has appointed Patrick Zehetmayr to head the banking group’s commercial real estate business, which encompasses non-residential activities at both the stock-listed company’s holding level and at Erste Bank Oesterreich, the group’s Austrian subsidiary. In his new role, Zehetmayr is responsible for the group’s commercial real estate coverage and financing activities, as well as for the real estate leasing business of Erste Group Immorent (EGI), whose supervisory board he chairs.

CTP announced a new aggressive growth plan to achieve a portfolio size of 10 million sqm by 2023. In order to reach this ambitious goal, CTP is taking steps towards various options to further strengthen its capital base and enhance its growth prospects. The company is currently considering partnering with a strategic investor.

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