At the end of 2018, modern office stock in Poland’s eight biggest cities (Krakow, Wrocław, Tricity, Katowice, Poznań, Łódź, Szczecin and Lublin) stood at more than 4.9 million sqm (+12% y/y). Krakow, Wrocław and Tricity topped the league table for total office stock. The Wrocław office market was the second regional city after Krakow to see its volume of office space exceed one million sqm. Cushman & Wakefield has summarized 2018 on Poland’s regional office markets.

Cushman & Wakefield in collaboration with Hodges Ward & Elliott represented Mornington Capital, an international hotel investment fund manager in the sale of Prague’s iconic Don Giovanni Hotel in Prague. The deal was signed on 20 February with the transaction price undisclosed. The new owner is a leading family-owned fund from Scandinavia. Czech-based Czech Inn Hotels remains the hotel’s operator.

Cushman & Wakefield has become the new property manager for Myslbek, the iconic multi-purpose building owned by AEW. As part of Cushman & Wakefield’s international collaboration, its Polish office has become the manager of two major shopping and office centres in Poland, Klif in Gdynia, Klif House of Fashion and Klif Tower in Warsaw from the same owners. Both offices assume their property management duties in February 2019.

Office building transactions on the Romanian market reached the highest level of the last decade in 2018, as 20 assets with a total GLA of 220,000 square meters and a value of more than €500 million were transacted only in Bucharest, according to Cushman & Wakefield Echinox.

Developers and real estate investors completed land acquisitions with a cumulative value of around €245 million last year in Bucharest, a new record for the past ten years, according to the Cushman & Wakefield Echinox which has monitored 31 medium and large transactions.

Cushman & Wakefield Echinox has strengthened its Capital Markets team by promoting Alexandru Mitrache as Head of Transactions - Land & Investment.

Cushman & Wakefield has mapped the office property market in detail and made a chart of the largest owners and the most active developers of office buildings in the main markets of the Czech Republic. At this point, there is 4.23 million sqm of office space in the Czech Republic. CPI Group is the biggest owner with 22 properties taking up 5% of the total area. The three biggest office owners in Prague control about 15% of the entire market. Penta Investments has been the most active developer over the course of the last ten years.

New retail supply amounted to approximately 420,000 sqm in 2018, pushing Poland’s total retail stock up by 3% to 14.7 million sqm. Nearly 30% of the new supply was completed in small-scale shopping centres and retail parks (sized below 20,000 sqm). Extensions of existing shopping centres and retail parks delivered approximately 60,000 sqm of new retail space. Cushman & Wakefield presented a summary of the Polish retail market in 2018.

At the end of 2018, Warsaw’s total office stock stood at 5.46 million sqm. Despite last year’s supply gap, which is expected to carry into 2019, new supply totalled 232,700 sqm delivered across 20 office projects, down by 70,000 sqm on the five-year average for 2012–2017. Cushman & Wakefield presented a summary of 2018 on the Warsaw office market.

The Polish commercial real estate market is in the best shape it has ever been, posting a record-high investment volume that exceeded €7 billion in 2018. Office and industrial sectors, in particular, are setting new highs with last year’s trading volumes at nearly €2.6 billion and nearly €1.9 billion, respectively.