Strategic joint ventures and sale and leaseback deals are some of the emerging structures that are gaining ground in the commercial real estate investment industry in the EMEA, shows a Colliers report.

Czech real estate fund Investika's latest acquisition is the Royal Trakt Offices building in Warsaw. The roughly 150-year-old property in the centre of the capital city was bought by the fund from global real estate investor Patrizia SE. The acquisition was announced to Property Forum by Linklaters, the law firm that advised the real estate fund Investika during the acquisition. No further details of the transaction have been disclosed yet.

In the first two quarters of 2023, the volume of investment in the Polish real estate market was about €870 million. This result is 70% lower than the first half of 2022, when the Warsaw Hub office complex was sold for a record price. Investment in the warehouse sector accounted for more than half of the volume for H1 2023, with a total turnover of €438 million. Although this result represented a decrease of 34% compared to the first half of 2022, it was still higher than the 10-year average of €425 million, says JLL. 

The retail sector has been leading the investment activity in the first half of 2023 across CEE, having a share of 35% of the total volume of transactions that reached around €2.02 billion, according to a Colliers report.

Isle of Man-registered Black Sea Property, a company involved in property development, financing, and sales in Bulgaria, has recently announced a significant acquisition. They have signed an agreement to acquire 98.27% ownership of the Bulgarian hotel operator, Grand Hotel Varna, for approximately €28 million. The deal is to be finalized by October 30th. It aims to bolster Black Sea Property's investments in the hospitality sector.

Czech investment group Enern and Lincoln Property Company, an American company operating in the European market including Slovakia, have started construction of a new office project in Warsaw called The FORM. The project was purchased by the new owners in 2021 from Penta Real Estate. Its financing includes recently issued bonds worth €30 million with an annual coupon of six and a half percent, which are managed and secured by J&T Bank. The bonds are listed and traded on the Bratislava Stock Exchange, trend.sk reports.

Hotel chain Hyatt has expanded its presence in Bulgaria with the recent opening of its second Hyatt Regency hotel. The Hyatt Regency Pravets Resort, previously part of the Spanish chain RIU Hotels, is now under the umbrella of Hyatt Hotels Corporation. This expansion follows the opening of Hyatt Regency Sofia in 2020.

YIT is the new owner of the Kuta Centrum office complex in Prague 4. In the future, the complex, renamed YIT Office Centrum, should be transformed into a residential complex, the CEO of YIT told online daily newstream.cz.

CBRE SEE’s Capital Markets team has acted as a sell-side advisor to Zetland Capital in the disposal of the 11,800 sqm Situla Business Center office complex in Ljubljana, the advisory firm announced on LinkedIn. The buyer’s name and the purchase price have not been disclosed.

The current results of the Polish investment market may not appear very optimistic at the moment, but this is only a temporary situation. The Polish real estate market has a solid foundation, and investors have proven to be highly adaptable, as evidenced by the results achieved in previous challenging years, reveals Avison Young's investment market summary for H1 2023, prepared by Research and Data Manager Paulina Brzeszkiewicz-Kuczyńska.