What's driving ESG investments in 2023? This question was attempted to be answered by the participants of one of the panel discussions at the CEE Property Forum 2023 conference, which was held last week in Vienna. We write about some of the answers they found in the summary below.

The industrial sector will remain on the radar of investors due to the ongoing nearshoring trend but development should also accelerate across other commercial sector once interest rates start to fall, concluded speakers of the investment trends panel of CEE Property Forum 2023, held in Vienna.

Property Forum is proud to be joining the first European World Built Environment Forum as a Media Partner. The event, organised by Property Forum’s long-term partner, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), will be held at the Procuratie Vecchie, Venice, a historical landmark in Piazza San Marco, in collaboration with Generali Real Estate.

Green certificates were something sufficient years ago, but in the present market reality, they fail to cover the social and governance parts of the ESG principles. Some of them are also seriously outdated – this is how one can summarize a panel discussion on developments at last month's European ESG Property Forum 2023 in Warsaw.

Although not long ago the PRS market seemed to be the obvious choice, thanks to the sudden improvement in economic conditions and the optimism of buyers, the construction of apartments for sale in Poland is today a more profitable solution - this is the main conclusion of a panel discussion at Living Investment Forum 2023, an event organized by Property Forum in Warsaw in May.

The opening panel of European ESG Property Forum 2023, which took place last week in Warsaw, has shown that the best stimulator to implement ESG strategies in the property market are always the financial and legal regulations.

After a period of rapid development in the years 2021-22, the Polish PRS market is experiencing a setback in terms of the number of both new projects and concluded deals. The participants of the investment panel during Property Forum’s Living Investment Forum 2023 conference in Warsaw tried to discover the reason for such a state of affairs.

The investment panel at Prague Property Forum 2023 focused on investment opportunities and financing. While banks emphasized that they are ready to lend money, perhaps more cautiously, investors talked more about waiting for the right moment when investment opportunities appear. The great potential of the Czech market is mainly in the local money and local investors, which gives the market stability, participants agreed.

For the first time, Zagreb Property Forum was organised in the Croatian capital, bringing together real estate experts from the local market and beyond. The event confirmed increasing interest by investors and developers for Croatia, especially following the country’s admission to the Eurozone and the Schengen Area. However, given the global macroeconomic climate, uncertainty persists.

Nearly all players in the commercial real estate market share the view that the pressure is growing on corporate leaders to have an ESG-compliant stock and operation. But the majority of them stop at „E” i.eg. being more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. This was one of the takeaways of last week’s Budapest ESG Meetup, organized by Property Forum in partnership with workcloud24.