Czech investment group RSJ plans to make it easier for Prague developers to finance the purchase of land for residential projects. Until now, RSJ has only cooperated with developers through shares in their projects but the new RSJ Landbank sub-fund will buy the land instead of the developer, who will take it over only after obtaining all building permits, which in Prague usually takes several years, local daily E15 reports.

According to the Czech analyst of Euroconstruct, David Frič, Czech construction certainly did not evade the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the industry fell by 3.6% in 2020 and is unlikely to return to pre-pandemic levels in the next two years.

The Czech Republic once again ranks high in the rating of the 47 best manufacturing destinations. Thanks to a good score in all criteria such as operating costs, labour, political and economic risk and the ability to bounce back after the coronavirus crisis, the country came fifth globally and first in Europe. Since 2016 when the Czech Republic was included in Cushman & Wakefield’s Manufacturing Risk Index for the first time, it has been ranked among the best manufacturing destinations on a regular basis.

During H1 2021, Czech residential developer Central Group has completed the acquisition of land plots in three Prague locations, Žižkov, Hloubětín and Vysočany, for CZK 750 million. It plans to build almost a thousand new apartments on the land.

CPI Hotels has begun the construction of a new Clarion hotel in Brno, near the city’s main train station, local daily Denik reports.

According to Savills, total modern office space in Prague increased slightly in Q2 2021 to 3.73 million sqm. Although subdued and still challenged by uncertainty, Q2 2021 saw a recovery in new supply as 49,500 sqm was delivered to the market across four new projects. Even though a decline of 57% is still visible in y-o-y comparison, new office supply for the second quarter is 10% above the pre-pandemic quarterly average.

The occupancy level in Prague’s hotels was just 10% during the first six months of this year, with revenue remaining far below the average of the pre-coronavirus years. Contrary to initial expectations, their owners are not selling them – definitely not on a mass scale. Investors’ interest in buying remains strong – more than one-third of them are “very” or “highly” interested in Prague, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s current Hotel Investor Beat survey. Investors obviously trust Prague’s hospitality market and perceive its current situation as temporary.

Czech investor Arete Group’s third fund, focused on quality industrial and logistics assets in the CEE region, completed the acquisition of a production and storage facility near Beroun, 20 km from Prague. This is the acquisition of a complex used for the production and storage of the Czech company Hronovský s.r.o., which was founded in 1990 and is one of the leaders in the field of cable assembly production, machining on CNC machines, pressing of plastic components and assembly of mechatronic components. The financial volume of the transaction exceeded almost €10 million.

According to Savills, the Czech nationwide industrial vacancy rate declined again and reached a new historic low of 2.4%, after dropping by 89 basis points (bps) since the end of 2020. The volume of new industrial space delivered to the market during H1 2021 was 43% down year-on-year (y-o-y). The total stock of modern industrial premises in the country grew by 192,300 sqm, of which 110,800 sqm were completed in Q2 2021. At the end of June, the total stock stood at 9.3 million sqm.

Following their reopening in May, shopping centres have seen both their revenue and footfall increase to a rate exceeding the performance during the same period last year. The footfall was lower than in the pre-crisis year 2019, but the revenue was comparable; in fact, it was slightly higher. Supermarkets and hypermarkets fare the best in terms of revenue; electronics and health and beauty products are also doing well. The current performance of shopping centres can therefore be described as very strong, with figures exceeding initial expectations, and investors show renewed interest in properties again, with several major retail transactions being planned for this year and the next. To date, office and logistics properties have been selling the best this year.