Total commercial real estate investment across CEE (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) reached €4.4bn in Q4 2016, a 27% increase on Q4 2015. This took full year volumes for 2016 to just over €11bn, an 11% increase on 2015 (€9.9bn), bucking the wider trend across Europe and on the continent where volumes shrank year-on-year. Cushman & Wakefield Czech Republic predicts a further growth of the region. 

ČS Real Estate fund, the largest and oldest Czech open-ended property fund, managed by REICO, has acquired the Park One office building in Bratislava for €35.6 million from private investment firm Falcon II Fund. 

In most Central and Eastern European countries the commercial property market is heavily concentrated in the capital city and modern offices in secondary or tertiary cities are virtually non-existent. Luckily, that is not the case in the Czech Republic, where there are cities outside of Prague, most notably Brno, that offer attractive opportunities for international companies. Czech-based developer CTP invited us for the opening ceremony of the new Courtyard by Marriott hotel and showed us the city’s property market.

JLL has appointed Miroslav Barnas as Country Manager of its Czech Republic business, which is headquartered in Prague, with immediate effect. He will lead the Czech business alongside his existing responsibilities as Country Manager for JLL's business in Slovakia.

2016 reached the volume of €11.8bn in investment markets across Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, according to a research report by Colliers International. Aside from Poland, investment flows in 2017 will be close to or higher than 2016’s.  The retail sector might see continued rental growth and high investment levels across the region.

With effect from this January, Cushman & Wakefield is the manager of both shopping centres in Mladá Boleslav. Both Olympia Mladá Boleslav, which Cushman & Wakefield has been managing since 2015, and Bondy shopping centre are now under the management of one company. CPI Property Group owns both centres.

Total real estate investment volume in the Czech Republic exceeded €3.7 billion in 2016, CBRE revealed. The most notable transactions in 2016 were the sale of P3 Logistics Parks, the Park and Florentinum, with 67 transactions being mediated on the Czech market in total. 

AEW has sold the Smíchov Gate office building in Prague 5 after almost ten years of ownership on behalf of one of the funds managed by AEW. The new owner is Redside, manager of real estate open-ended investment fund NOVA Real Estate (SICAV). Cushman & Wakefield facilitated the sale of the property.

CA Immo has completed negotiations with Union Investment Real Estate GmbH on acquiring 49% of shares each in the office buildings Danube House in Prague and Building A of Infopark in Budapest, both so far part of the open-ended property fund UniImmo: Europe. The deal, which has already been closed, will make an immediate positive contribution to long-term profitability by around €3 million.

CPI Property Group anticipates the acquisition of a retail portfolio located in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania from funds managed by CBRE Global Investors. If completed, this can become the largest real estate deal of the region in 2017.