Echo Polska Properties (EPP) and Echo Investment concluded final agreements concerning a joint purchase and development of a mixed-use project at 22 Towarowa Street in Warsaw. The property with an area of 6.5-ha is located in a rapidly developing part of the capital city and it is the largest commercial plot in the city centre.

Strong demand across all investment sectors is expected to continue into 2017 in the Czech Republic and the €3 billion boundary could be exceeded once again. Retail is likely to become the most popular asset class next year, followed by offices and industrial. CBRE has released the Czech Republic Real Estate Market Outlook 2017.

Blackstone has sold the Hilton Prague Old Town hotel and Gestin Centrum, an adjacent 6,900 sqm mixed use commercial building, to Singapore-based real estate investment group M&L Hospitality. JLL’s Hotels & Hospitality group advised Blackstone on the sale.

Last year few would have anticipated that commercial real estate investment volumes for Hungary would even reach €1 billion this year, yet now it seems sure that 2016 will be a record year on the investment market. Over €910 million have been transacted in the first half of the year and an astonishing amount of new deals were announced in the second part of 2016, especially in the last few weeks. Looking at the transactions that took place this year, two things seem certain: one is that several new entrants made purchases in 2016 and the other is that market transparency still has a long way to go. 

Slovak investor IAD Investments, acting through its fund Prvý realitný fond o.p.f., has purchased Laugaricio Shopping Centre in Trenčín, Slovakia. The original owners were private investors represented by Mint Investments. This sale, the largest property transaction in Slovakia this year, was brokered by Cushman & Wakefield. 

Cushman & Wakefield, representing CIB Bank, have facilitated the transfer of the former CIB Bank Headquarter offices on Szabadság square, Central Budapest to a German investor as of December 1, 2016. 

Skanska has sold the Nordic Light office building in Budapest, Hungary, to the real estate funds of Erste Alapkezelő Zrt. – one of the subsidiaries of Erste Asset Management GmbH. The value of the transaction is €67 million. The transaction has been recorded in December, with the transfer of the property scheduled for the first quarter of 2017. Skanska has also started its newest office development in the Hungarian capital.

M7 Real Estate, the pan-European investor and asset manager, announces that it has made two further acquisitions for the recently launched CEREF I fund. The acquisitions in Croatia and Hungary totalling €14 million mark M7's first entry into both countries.

As announced in October 2016, Rockcastle concluded a preliminary agreement to acquire Galeria Warmińska shopping centre in the city of Olsztyn in Poland from Galeria Warmińska Spółka z Ograniczoną Odpowiedzialnością Spółka Komandytowa. All conditions precedent have been met and the transaction was concluded effective as of 15 December 2016.

The sale of Q22 skyscraper located on al. Jana Pawła II in Warsaw has been completed and Invesco Real Estate has become the new owner of the building. Echo Investment expects that the value of the transaction based on fully let NOI and an agreed yield, after all adjustments and additional payments, shall amount to €273 million. The acquisition of Q22 is the largest investment transactions in the office market in Poland and one of the biggest in Central and Eastern Europe in 2016.