The works for Speedwell’s newest project, Paltim, will soon kick off in the city of Timișoara. The demolition permit has been issued and the works are set to start in the first part of July 2020.

Local real estate developer One United Properties has acquired an office building recently completed in the Aviation area of Bucharest. The new owner paid €15 million to local construction company Conarg for the project, profit.ro reported. One United hopes to rent it and increase its value to €21-22 million within a year.

Warsaw is among the top 10 European cities for the fintech sector. According to Savills, which prepared the ranking, the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the digitalisation of the banking sector and Poland provides a favourable environment for fintechs to expand.

Colliers expects that a fair amount of market activity in 2020 will come from lease renegotiations and renewals as opposed to new and pre-lease transactions and that we might record more sub-leases being offered if companies need to downsize. Tenant covenants will receive additional scrutiny by landlords, banks and investors in order to limit risk to a sustainable income. Colliers launched the ExCEEding Borders Office Snapshot for the 14 CEE capital cities and summarised the key Q1 2020 market results with year on year comparison.

The PZU Group has leased 47,000 sqm of office, retail, service and warehouse space, as well as 325 parking spaces in Generation Park Y – Skanska’s highest office building in CEE located in Warsaw. With this lease, the building is now 98.5 percent occupied. The PZU Group will move its headquarters to the new office in Q2 2022. This is the largest lease agreement in the history of the office market in Poland and the history of the Skanska Group in the world.

Israeli-owned real estate developer Hagag Development Europe has received the urban planning certificate for the restoration of Știrbei Palace in Bucharest which will be converted into a modern office building.  

Solid economic fundamentals will be instrumental in the fast rebuilding of asset values in Poland. If they are not weakened by the country’s overregulation and fiscal policy, and the government temporarily helps entrepreneurs maintain liquidity, investor confidence in most commercial real estate sectors should fully recover by the end of this year, says Bolesław Kołodziejczyk, PhD, Head of Research & Advisory, Cresa Poland.

Czech real estate group Českomoravská Nemovitostní (ČMN) has completed the €74.5 million (CZK 2 billion) acquisition of two office buildings, City West C1 and C2 in Prague's Stodůlky area. The seller is Luxembourg-registered Capital Financial Holdings (CFH). Raiffeisenbank provided financing for the acquisition.

Savills Investment Management has signed a new lease agreement involving Gate One Business Park in Warsaw. An international company dealing with data centre services has leased 21,000 sqm of the modern space at the Gate Two building. The term of the agreement is 15 years.

Westbridge Advisory International AG, the international entity of operating cost optimizer Westbridge Advisory, has converted a portfolio of six office buildings for Union Investment in Poland to green electricity. By bundling the entire supply with a single utility and the switch of the entire portfolio to green electricity, it was possible to reduce CO2-emissions by roughly 7,600 tons. The properties, located in Warsaw, Wroclaw and Poznan, have a total rental area of around 155,000 sqm and an aggregated annual electricity consumption of 25 gigawatt-hours.