In recent years, Poland's hotel market has shown continuous overall growth and has seen extensive investment. The number of hotels has almost doubled in the past ten years, predominantly due to Poland's opportunity to co-host the UEFA Euro 2012 with Ukraine. Between 2012 and 2016 alone, the number of hotels increased from 2,014 to 2,463, a 22% increase. Hotel property adviser Christie & Co analysed the Polish hotel market.

Warburg-HIH Invest Real Estate has acquired the Pegaz office building in Wroclaw, Poland, on behalf of an individual fund for an institutional investor. Built in 2016 the property has a total rentable area of 20,900 sqm and 390 parking spaces. Pegaz was acquired from Austrian developer UBM Development AG. The parties have agreed not to disclose the purchase price.

Cushman & Wakefield is responsible for the commercialisation of Pradera’s four retail parks in Poland: Homepark Targówek and Homepark Janki in Warsaw, Homepark Rawa in Katowice and Homepark Franowo in Poznań. The four retail schemes provide more than 100,000 sqm of GLA.

Master Management Group is planning the first European outlet centre with a village designed concept in Poland. The first phase of the project, located in Łomna near Warsaw, close to the Warsaw – Gdańsk route and Modlin Airport, will have an area of almost 19,000 sqm. The second phase will deliver a further 30,000 sqm.

Kraków is the biggest office market in Poland outside of Warsaw. In August 2017 Kraków surpassed the threshold of 1 million sqm of overall supply. As for H2 2017, JLL expects that the volume of new office space will total 105,000 sqm, which would constitute the second best result in Poland with Warsaw claiming the top position

In line with the current accounting standards, commercial real estate leases and operating leases do not have be treated as long-term liabilities. They are very often held off-balance sheet or only partially disclosed as short-term liabilities. As a result, businesses, including the largest listed companies reporting in accord-ance with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), are required solely to include upcoming operating lease instalments and rental payments in their balance sheets. This, however, will change as of 1 January 2019. Bolesław Kołodziejczyk, PhD, Head of Research & Advisory at Cresa Poland analysed the impacts of IFRS 16.

HB Reavis’ flagship development in Warsaw’s city centre, Varso, has been awarded a WELL Core & Shell Precertification by the International WELL Building Institute. Through the introduction of solutions aimed at improving employee wellbeing at the building design stage, Varso is WELL Core & Shell Precertified at the Gold level, and could be awarded WELL Core & Shell Certification following final performance verification upon completion in 2020.

Up to 210,000 sqm of modern office space was leased in H1 2017 by companies from the business services sector - this accounts for 60% of overall demand for office space outside Warsaw. According to forecasts by ABSL, employment in business service centres in Poland will continue to grow. By 2020, the sector will likely employ approximately 300,000 specialists, further fuelling office take-up. As a consequence, smaller cities will be even more competitive to attract investors. JLL has conducted an analysis of the activity of tenants from the business services sector outside Warsaw in H1 2017.

Cushman & Wakefield is the first global commercial real estate services firm to have opened a regional office in Lublin. This comes as a direct response to the growing office tenant demand, particularly in the BPO, SSC and IT sectors, for top-quality advisory services in south-eastern Poland. Cushman & Wakefield will occupy an office in ZANA Office II.

The CEO of TriGranit is still optimistic for 2017 on the Budapest property market, but he expects some kind of correction in the coming years. The question is: will this correction take place in the form of a market stabilisation or will it bring on a significant downturn? Árpád Török talked to Property Forum about TriGranit’s plans for new developments and acquisitions.