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.

Garbe Industrial Real Estate GmbH has acquired as part of its European expansion strategy into the CEE market, a first class development opportunity in Chomutov, The 65,000 sqm land plot is directly located on highway exit D7. Demolition of the current properties will begin by the end of this year and construction of the new, 32,000 sqm state of the art logistics real estate facilities is scheduled to begin in summer 2021. 

Mid Europa Partners, a private equity investor in Central and Eastern Europe, announced an agreement to sell 24% of the issued share capital in Waberer's International Nyrt. to Trevelin Holding Zrt. (member of Indotek Group). It also granted a call option to Indotek over Mid Europa's remaining 47.99% of the issued share capital. The transaction is subject to customary anti-trust clearance and is expected to close by the end of the first quarter 2021.

Belgian real estate developer Speedwell is rapidly expanding in Romania with ongoing projects in Bucharest, Timisoara and Cluj-Napoca. Didier Balcaen, Founder and CEO of the company who will be a speaker at our upcoming SEE Property Forum 2020 in Bucharest, talked to us about Speedwell’s ongoing projects and shared his vision for handling the changes that COVID-19 has brought on the market.