Croatia's AZ pension funds have acquired 99.9% of local real estate company M7 Primo for €21 million (HRK 161 million) via a capital increase ahead of M7 Primo's planned listing next year.

Accolade is investing €35 million in the construction of Panattoni Park Bydgoszcz III. With the help of the investor, Panattoni has already completed two modern parks with nearly 90,000 sqm of BREEAM certified sustainable warehouse space in the Bydgoszcz area.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the property investment market in Romania? What are the biggest challenges companies face these days? Is the wait and see period really over in Romania? Four experts tried to answer these questions and more at SEE Property Forum 2020, a hybrid event organised by Property Forum and RICS. We summarised the highlights of the discussion, moderated by Codrin Matei (Crosspoint Real Estate).

A Hungarian real estate fund, advised by VLK Cresa, has acquired the Target Center retail park in Kecskemét, Southern Hungary. The name of the seller and buyer or the purchase price has not been disclosed.

HelloParks, Futureal Group’s recently established industrial and logistics property development and investment company, has acquired its first development plot in Fót, next to the junction of motorways M0 and M3. The 76 ha greenfield investment will house energy-efficient buildings that meet the BREEAM sustainability standard, with the first facility to be completed next year.

CEE Investment volumes for the Q1-Q3 2020 period have reached ca. €8.0 billion and are 12% down compared to the same period of 2019. Poland attracted €4 billion which represents 50% of all volumes in this period. Average transaction sizes are up 31.5% and the number of transactions is down 32% according to Colliers International. Despite investor appetite remaining strong for CEE, year-end volumes are likely to reach €10-11 billion, ca. 20% lower than in 2019.

The transaction in which Sif Banat – Crișana bought the shares held by Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction in Doosan IMGB, was authorized by the Competition Council. The transaction, involving a land plot with an area of ​​540,000 square meters, the largest land plot ever traded in Bucharest, was brokered by Crosspoint Real Estate.

Funds managed by Partners Group are to acquire nine newly built, largely occupied office buildings from BUMA's portfolio and two assets under construction with a total leasable area of approximately 125,000 sqm for circa €200 million. The assets are located in Kraków and Wrocław. REINO Partners will partner with Partners Group to manage the portfolio.

In the third quarter of this year, residential developers operating in the six largest cities in Poland sold 13,300 units, which is 94% more than in the previous quarter. In most markets, these units were sold at higher asking prices than in the second quarter. Thanks to new launches, which returned to the level seen at the beginning of 2020 of 13,000 units, the offer remained stable, according to the latest JLL report on Poland’s residential market.

Experts of the international investors’ panel at SEE Property Forum 2020, a hybrid event organised by Property Forum and RICS, agreed that Romania’s property investment market has matured a lot in recent years but the lack of liquidity is still an issue. They also confirmed that COVID-19 makes it difficult to forecast the future direction of the market and it makes certain market players, especially banks, more cautious.