Clients interested in new industrial premises in the Czech Republic had very little to choose from last year. Thanks to record demand, which reached a record 2.39 million sqm in gross terms for the whole year, vacancy rates fell to 1.63%, a historic low. The result was also affected by a lower volume of completed industrial properties, mainly due to the impact of anti-pandemic measures. However, this changed at the end of the year when a record 800,000 sqm of industrial space was under construction. The urgent need to meet tenants' enormous demand is also evidenced by the fact that the share of speculative development has once again increased after a longer period of inactivity, 108 Agency reported today.

In 2021, PSN has grown not only in the number of collaborators but also in the number of projects and new acquisitions. It sold 294 units for CZK 1.5 billion and completed over 800 leases worth CZK 70 million. PSN's plans for the next five years include the construction of 3,000 new apartments worth CZK 11 billion and it plans to invest another CZK 10 billion in land acquisitions.

Last year, 9698 flats in Prague received final building permits, which is 5363 more than the year before and the most since 1997, the year from which data is available. This is according to data on the construction industry published by the Czech Statistical Office (CSO). In recent years, the Czech capital has been struggling with a rise in housing prices by tens of percents a year, which the city's authorities say is also due to insufficient construction. Deputy Mayor Petr Hlaváček said that with the recovery of construction, the prices of flats are expected to get cheaper in the medium term, Czech News Agency reports.

Romanian construction and logistics company Masterbuild is investing €20 million in a logistics park spanning 16,000 sqm in the Butimanu - Dâmbovița area, near Bucharest. 

In the Czech Republic, modular construction has often been used in prefabricated houses in the past. Now, developer YIT is coming up with prefabricated parts in the new residential project Lappi Hloubětín in Prague. Further use of the modules is planned in the Vesi Hostivař project, e15.cz reports.

According to the forecast of EECFA, the Romanian construction industry is poised to grow in both 2022 and 2023. The main drivers of growth vary, including low interest rates and excess liquidity that boost the residential subsector or the use of EU 2014-2020 cohesion funds to help boost civil engineering, writes Dr Sebastian Sipos-Gug from Ebuild srl / EECFA Romania.

Bogdan Doicescu, Development Director and Executive Board Member at Bog’Art, spoke with Property Forum about the company’s construction pipeline and the outlook of the real estate market in Romania going into 2022.

Romania is expected to see only moderate growth on the horizon. Serbia, having recorded the biggest expansion of almost 100% in the 2014-2020 period, is foreseen to plateau in the upcoming years, according to the Eastern European Construction Forecasting Association’s 2021 Winter Construction Forecast Report.

After a significant expansion in Q2 2021, the value of started construction works in the Hungarian construction industry marked a major drop between July and September. Yet overall, the Activity Start indicator remained high for Q3 2021 due to the exceptionally good second quarter, according to the EBI Construction Activity Report.

Croatia’s remarkable recovery from the brutal impact that the COVID-19 epidemic had on the country in 2020 is, like its construction boom, both real and smoke and mirrors, both temporary and long-term, according to Michael Glazer (SEE Regional Advisors) and Tatjana Halapija (Nada Projekt), the Eastern European Construction Forecasting Association’s members in Croatia.