Wing is transforming the Material Center building in Budapest, which until now has operated as a shopping mall, into an office building. The building, which has an area of over 20,000 square metres, will be fully converted and renovated to a high standard, to be reborn as the Skylight City office centre. The preparatory works have already begun, and offices are already available for rental in the building.

Demand continues to be strong on the Budapest office market and with new supply still limited the vacancy rate decreased further in Q1 2017. It now stands at 9.2% which is the lowest rate on record. The Budapest Research Forum published its newest figures.

M7 Real Estate announced that its first Central European fund for third party investors, M7 Central European Real Estate Fund I (M7 CEREF I), has now completed its final close, reaching its target raise of €60 million of investor capital. This follows investor commitments of more than €35 million at its first close in October 2016.

2016’s record-breaking €12.2 billion investment in the real estate sector in the CEE region is likely to be surpassed in 2017 – this is according to CEE Real Estate Investment Compass 2017 published by Colliers International and CMS. The sources of investment flows into the CEE region are also expected to remain diverse in 2017, with Asian and CEE investors becoming increasingly active in the real estate market.

Atenor confirmed the closing of the sale of the third building of the Váci Greens campus in Budapest to Hungarian real estate fund OTP Prime Ingatlanbefektetesi Alap and consequently the collection of the full sale price, i.e. €63.75 million. Váci Greens B comprises 25,300 sqm of office space and 399 basement parking spaces. 

With the sale of its 51% holding in the Aerozone logistics park to M7 CEREF I in Budapest, CA Immo has completed the strategic withdrawal from the logistics segment that began in 2012. Over the past few years, almost 500,000 sqm of logistical space in total has been sold in Poland, Romania, Hungary and Germany. 

In 2017, following its international assessment, CBRE has created a survey among real estate investors in Hungary asking them about their market expectations. At the CBRE Investment Breakfast investors turned out to be optimistic about the future. 43% of the respondents stated that the investment market might grow even by one-fifth from last year’s €1.5 billion and 23% stated that this year they might reach their highest turnover ever.

The current forecast for total construction volumes in Hungary shows increases of 8% and 12% for 2017 and 2018, respectively. The barriers for the realization of the developments are the rise of construction costs and the lack of skilled labour force. CBRE expects that these issues raise risks of delivery delays and decrease of developers’ profit margins.

CPI Property Group announced that its subsidiaries have acquired a retail portfolio with the value of approx. €650 million consisting of predominantly 11 shopping centres located in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania with a total leasable area of approximately 265,000 sqm from two funds managed by CBRE Global Investors. The closing of the deal was completed on 29 March, 2017. 

Obtaining a green certificate for modern office buildings has become a must in recent years. Still, developers, operators and tenants don’t fully realise what does a certification actually stand for and what kind of effect green solutions actually have on operating costs and productivity. The latest Green Talk, co-organised by RICS and HuGBC, focused on green buildings in Hungary.