Alpha Bank Romania has sold a 60,000 sqm plot of land in Timișoara to German retail chain Lidl and two other investors. The Romanian bank previously planned to develop a shopping centre there, Ziarul Financiar reported.

Union Investment has agreed to acquire two planned hotel properties in Kraków and Katowice with a total of 527 rooms. The developer, vendor and future operator of the two midscale hotels, which are scheduled for completion in autumn 2021, is UBM. The purchase price of the ibis Styles-branded hotel in Kraków and Mercure-branded hotel in Katowice is approximately €86 million in total. Both leases run for 25 years.

Invesco Real Estate has sold two build-to-suit distribution centres in Poland totalling 105,000 sqm to Chinese investment company CGL Investment Holdings Corporation. The sale was made on behalf of Invesco’s strategic opportunities investment programme and the corporate transaction has set new records for the market with assets valued based on a record yield for the Polish logistics market of 4.25%. The purchase price was not disclosed.

Cavatina Holding has signed a sale agreement for the Equal Business Park office complex in Kraków. The complex comprises four buildings offering a total of over 60,000 sqm of Class A office space. The buyer is a joint venture managed by Apollo-Rida Poland.

Savills World Research says that offices in core city markets around the world will be real estate investors’ focus in 2020, but with opportunities scarce and yields at record lows, many will be forced to look elsewhere. Alternative assets, such as student housing, multi-family, co-living and data centres, will therefore become increasingly mainstream. Globally, Savills says that securing income returns will remain the overarching theme for real estate investment in 2020.

Globalworth Real Estate Investment, by buying a 50% stake from Elgan Group, has become the sole shareholder of real estate developer Elgan Offices. The two companies developed the Renault Bucharest Connected (RBC) building located in the western part of Bucharest. Elgan Group is owned by Israeli businessman Simon Roth.

Savills Investment Management prefers long-lease income streams in 2020 instead of value-add and opportunistic strategies that depend on economic and strong employment prospects. The international real estate investment manager published its market outlook.

The Investment Services department at Colliers International has been joined by Mark Richardson as director. The new expert will be a valuable support for the team managed by Piotr Mirowski. 

According to JLL estimates, the value of the real estate investment transactions in Poland was a record-breaking €7.4 billion. This is a better result than 2018 (over €7.2 billion. The last 12 months were the best ever for the office segment, where the sales and acquisitions were worth more than €3.8 billion – over a billion euros more than the previous year.

Hungary’s Indotek Group has agreed to acquire the majority ownership of local investor Diófa Asset Management. As one of the leading investment management and real estate development groups of Hungary, Indotek Group – as a professional long-term investor – intends to provide the ownership background Diófa Asset Management is in need of, in order to strengthen its market position and to develop its portfolio of services on the markets of property management and investment products.