Kraków is continuing its good run as Poland's second largest office market. During the first six months, lease contracts for nearly 135,000 sqm were signed in Kraków which equates to 44% of demand for modern office space outside Warsaw. The most notable transactions in H1 2019 signed both in Kraków and in the largest regional markets in Poland were a record pre-let by UBS for 19,600 sqm in Fabryczna Office Park, a pre-let by Sabre for almost 16,000 sqm in the Tischnera Office, and an 11,200 sqm renewal by Akamai in the Vinci Office Building.

French-based investment fund AEW has sold the America House office building in Bucharest to the real estate investment division of Morgan Stanley in association with a group of Israeli investors highly active on the real estate market, represented by David Hay

JLL will be responsible for leasing commercial space in Airport City Gdańsk. Construction of the complex, whose usable area will ultimately total approximately 120,000 sqm, will start at the end of this year.

User expectations have changed significantly during the past couple of years and this is a challenge that most landlords do not take lightly. Mátyás Gereben MRICS, Country Manager of CPI Hungary talked to Property Forum about the changing needs of office tenants and the shopping centre of the future.

OTP Real Estate Investment Fund has acquired the 26,000 sqm Roosevelt office building in central Budapest. The seller was Munich-based GLL Real Estate Partners (GLL).

Českomoravská Nemovitosti has acquired the BLOX office building in Prague's Dejvice district for more than €77 million (CZK 2 billion). The building's primary tenant is Amazon.  The acquisition was financed by ČSOB.

The number of office schemes built in Prague this year is the highest in the last five years: a total of 17 new buildings providing office space will have opened by the end of the year. The last time the market reached such a high figure was in 2014 – at the time, it was 18 schemes. In the meantime, the number was one-third lower, about 11 buildings on average.

Do Polish public administration units move with the times? It turns out that more and more of them indeed do - the number of state-owned institutions that have decided to lease space in modern office buildings have markedly increased in the past few years, according to JLL’s latest report.

The One Cotroceni Park project, developed by One United Properties in Bucharest on a 5.8 hectares land plot, will give a new dimension to the Work - Live - Shop concept on the local market, offering a 15,000 square meters retail area, comparable to that of a medium-sized shopping centre, to the future employees and residents who will live within the project.

According to one of CEE’s most active developers, tenants in recent years have become more open to innovative and sustainable solutions when it comes to renting retail or office spaces. Tibor Tatár, CEO of Futureal talked to Property Forum about the company’s current projects and changing tenant expectations. Tibor Tatár will be joining a panel on the Hungarian property market at our upcoming CEE Property Forum 2019 in Vienna.