Arete has completed the disposal of Arete Park Trenčín, a fully leased industrial asset in Slovakia with a total gross leasable area of approximately 5,600 sqm, to Erste Asset Management acting on behalf of Erste Realitná Renta, for an undisclosed purchase price.

Manova Partners has sold the Amazon Returns Center in Sereď, Slovakia, to Erste Realitní Renta, a fund managed by the Slovak branch of Erste Asset Management. The 62,245 sqm logistics facility was sold on behalf of a separate account, with the parties agreeing not to disclose the sale price.

The real estate fund Reico, part of the Austrian group Erste, is acquiring the Palladium Prague shopping centre. The Office for the Protection of Economic Competition has been assessing the transaction, reports E15.cz.

Erste Group Bank and its Romanian subsidiary BCR have jointly provided €21 million in refinancing for the Day Tower office building in Bucharest. The loan facility was signed with Danube Capital Partners.

Skanska has divested the first phase of its office complex H2Offices in Budapest, Hungary, to Erste Open-Ended Real Estate Investment Fund, represented by Erste Alapkezelő Zrt., for approximately €100 million. The transfer of the property is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2023.

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. 

Česká spořitelna has started to build affordable apartments with low rents for employees that cities lack. The first such apartment buildings with 254 flats are already taking shape in Prague 9, built by a subsidiary of the bank DBČS with the developer Finep for CZK 1 billion (€42.7 million). The bank plans to build a total of 1,000 flats by 2026. The bank also wants to cooperate with the Czech government to finance more flats through EU funds and loans from the European Investment Bank, DBČS subsidiary CEO Marek Blaha told the press.

Advance Tower, located on Budapest’s Váci Road office corridor, has become the latest office building to receive a WELL certification. With the International WELL Building Institute’s (IWBI) recent acknowledgement, two out of the three already WELL-certified office complexes in Hungary were developed by Futureal. Since 2020, Advance Tower has been part of Erste Open-Ended Euro Real Estate Investment Fund’s portfolio.

The fears of a recession are likely to cool down the red-hot real estate market in CEE countries, Erste specialists expect. According to them, this will be influenced mainly by surging inflation, the cost of credit and cooling down of the borrowing, and shrinking of the disposable household income which will also worsen the borrowing appetite in the coming periods. There is a change in the respondent’s behaviour too. Whereas respondents from Poland, Hungary and Croatia are open to buying or building a house, Czechs, Slovaks and Slovenians are less inclined to do so, say Erste experts in their recent special report.

Günther Artner (49) has taken over the management of the Commercial Real Estate business of Erste Group and Erste Bank Oesterreich as of 1 July 2022. Artner thus succeeds Patrick Zehetmayr, who is leaving Erste Group.