Urbanity Real Estate Group has presented its first ESG report. The company's new system for evaluating sustainability data is intended to enable it not only to better monitor and manage its operations, but also to meet the requirements of new European legislation. Financial institutions and clients that use manufacturing campuses operated by Urbanity are also starting to require the data.

Tomáš Vrbický, Founder of Czech development company Noho, talked to Property Forum about the recent energy crisis's positive impact on the sustainable housing approach. According to him, the crises also helped people to think about “green” housing more deeply and be more willing to pay extra for such living with unique solutions for energy savings as it can enormously reduce energy costs in the future.

Czech investment company Fidurock is expanding its portfolio. The latest acquisition, which took place in Trutnov, concerns one of the largest retail parks in the Czech Republic. According to idnes.cz, representatives of the investment holding company signed an agreement on the sale of Retail Park Trutnov with representatives of the Czech Real Estate Investment Fund at the end of June. The price of the transaction was not disclosed.

Czech real estate fund Investika's latest acquisition is the Royal Trakt Offices building in Warsaw. The roughly 150-year-old property in the centre of the capital city was bought by the fund from global real estate investor Patrizia SE. The acquisition was announced to Property Forum by Linklaters, the law firm that advised the real estate fund Investika during the acquisition. No further details of the transaction have been disclosed yet.

The floor area of newly completed office buildings in the Czech Republic fell by 20 percent last year. This year, we can expect a renewed increase, but this will be driven only by previously completed projects, with virtually no new office buildings being built this year, according to an analysis by facility management company ISS Czech Republic.

Prague's Arkády Pankrác shopping centre is changing hands. The Czech real estate fund Trigea is buying it from the Israeli company G City for €265 million, according to information from Trinity Bank, newstream.cz reports.

As it was unofficially confirmed last month, Sekyra Group has agreed with Dostupné bydlení České spořitelny and the insurance company Kooperativa on the sale of the Opatov II residential project in Prague 11. This is one of the largest build-to-rent (BTR) transactions in the Czech Republic, Sekyra Group announced. The price of the transaction was not disclosed. 

The second quarter of 2023 in the Czech Republic was characterized by record industrial construction, with more than 60 percent of it already pre-leased. The vacancy rate rose slowly to the current 1.7 percent, indicating a prevailing market sentiment that sees speculative construction and a recent-record high amount of space under construction, according to the latest analysis by the Industrial Reserch Forum.

One year after construction began, the rough construction of one of the future A1 office building in Prague's Rohan City project has been completed. Upon completion, the building will house the headquarters of Sekyra Group, the developer of the Rohan City project, among others. It is being built on a brownfield site on Rohanský island in Prague 8, which has been unused for many years.

Unlike in the Czech Republic, developers in Poland can rely on the deadlines given by law which makes it a lot easier to do business. Marcela Fialková, Strategy Director of Czech-based developer UDI Group talked to Property Forum about the challenges and opportunities different markets in CEE offer.