At the recent CEE Property Financing Update 2025, organised by Property Forum and CMS Poland, an expert panel convened to dissect the dynamics shaping real estate lending in CEE. Moderated by Csanád Csürös, CEO of Property Forum, and featuring insights from Beata Latoszek (Deutsche Hypo), Dieter Lobnig (Bank Pekao S.A.), Tomasz Niewola (mBank), and Hannes Wimmer (Erste Group Bank AG), the discussion illuminated the strategic responses of top lenders to evolving macroeconomic and market conditions.

A significant increase in lending activity can be expected this year for companies that use debt financing to develop their real estate portfolios, according to a pan-European CBRE survey. The year-on-year improvement in market sentiment across commercial real estate sectors was confirmed by 40% of respondents.

The debt markets in Europe remain resilient. An extensive survey by CBRE among 130 companies shows that the lending environment is on a solid footing for when investment activity starts to pick up in the second half of 2024. Nearly two-thirds of respondents expect a recovery compared to last year with refinancing being the main source of demand. Industrial and multifamily are the preferred sectors for lending, with student accommodation and hotels seeing the strongest increase in demand.

Although financing has become more expensive for real estate companies in the past 12 months, transactions are still being carried out, pointed out speakers in the financing strategies panel of CEE Property Forum 2022 in Vienna.

Although real estate development, investment and lending to the sector have taken a beating due to the pandemic's effects on the global economy, according to the results of the latest edition of KPMG’s Property Lending Barometer, property lending has gained an increased importance for banks in 2021, as on the one hand real estate loan portfolios are deteriorating, and, on the other, market conditions continue to gradually improve. Moreover, the tougher times mean that lending institutions within the region are able to pick and choose what types of developments and investments to grant loans to under stricter terms and conditions.

The industrial/logistics asset class is presently the most attractive for a majority of banks in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) following the breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to results from the latest edition of KPMG’s Property Lending Barometer (PLB), an annual study by the global audit and advisory firm that attempts to measure banks’ lending sentiments in Europe’s property markets. That preference lies in contrast to where most bank finance in Europe has typically landed prior to COVID: the office segment.

Banks in Europe are expecting a slow recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and while they forecast that hotel and retail loan portfolios will likely be hit more considerably than office and other real estate asset classes, the majority of them believes that the impairment will be in the range of a few percentage points up to 10% in total. These are some of the early findings from the COVID-specific section of this year's edition of KPMG's Property Lending Barometer, due to be published in autumn 2020.

In 2017, real estate transactions hit a record-breaking volume of € 5 billion, up by nearly 10% on the previous year. Bank financing for properties remained unchanged, averaging approximately 60% of each property’s value. Cushman & Wakefield has published its opinion on the commercial property lending market in Poland, written by Mira Kantor-Pikus, Partner, Equity, Debt & Structured Finance, Capital Markets at Cushman & Wakefield Poland.

The markets of Budapest, Bucharest, and Warsaw, in addition to Milan and Oslo, offer the most amenable conditions for both lenders and borrowers, according CBRE’s research.