Berlin-based Catella Residential Investment Management GmbH has sold two centrally located fully-let residential and student housing assets in Warsaw and Kraków in Poland to institutional investors in Austria and the Netherlands for more than €60 million on behalf of Munich-headquartered AIFM platform Catella Real Estate AG (CREAG).

Piotr Szafarz, Partner, Head of Real Estate in Poland and CEE, Dentons talked to Property Forum about the forecasts for the PRS market in Poland, the impact of the war in Ukraine on the European properties and the expected changes in financing conditions.

Construction of the Római Part residential park by Hungarian developer WING’s umbrella brand Living is already underway just off the riverbank of the Danube in Budapest. The 257-unit complex is the closest residential development of this size to the river.

Property Forum sat down with Piotr Trzciński, Head of Poland and Andrew Allen, Global Head of Research, Product Strategy and Development at Savills Investment Management, to talk about the company’s investment strategy in Europe and Poland in particular. They also talked about Savills IM’s ambition to become net zero by 2040 and the way ESG is shaping future developments in the European commercial real estate sector.

The construction of Park West 3 will start in the second half of 2022. It comprises 230 apartments in the renewed Ferdinánd quarter of the 13th District, and is scheduled for delivery in the first quarter of 2025.

The resources of the PRS sector in Poland are growing. Last year, almost one in five apartments was built for institutional lease, which also had a significant impact on developers' results. According to Walter Herz, in 2021, investments in portfolios of residential for rent in Poland amounted to approximately €725 million. There are already almost 8,000 units on the Polish market offered in the PRS segment and other several tens of thousands of apartments under construction.

Cavatina Group starts Cavatina International and plans to expand its portfolio of the living sector’s projects not only in Poland but also in foreign markets. Jason Drennan, a manager with more than 20 years of investment experience in Europe and the US, and more than 15 years connected with the real estate market will be responsible for the new platform development. First, together with leading international institutional investors, the company intends to expand its current portfolio of apartments for rent created under the Resi Capital brand from 2,000 to 10,000 units, focusing on environmentally certified projects.

Europe’s fundamental mismatch between voracious housing demand and the limited supply is driving massive investment growth in the residential sector and will continue to generate opportunities even amid geopolitical and economic uncertainties, according to a new report by Colliers.

Driven by large-scale mergers and acquisitions, European multifamily investment volumes in the 12 countries analysed reached approximately €92.3 billion in 2021, a 79% increase year-on-year and a 120% increase on the past five-year average, Savills announces. 

Record levels of investment poured into European residential assets last year, with spending nearly equal to that of office investment, Knight Frank reports. Just shy of €100 billion of assets were traded in the European residential investment sector in 2021, up 60% on 2020, analysis of data from RCA shows.