Aareal Bank announced the closing of a financing agreement with developer Ghelamco Group at the end of the second quarter of 2021. As sole agent, arranger and lender, Aareal Bank is providing a senior loan in the amount of €312.5 million to the family-owned real estate group, which is mainly active in the office, residential, retail, leisure and logistics markets.

Most of the capital invested in commercial real estate in Central and Eastern Europe in the first half of this year went to Poland. According to Walter Herz, the forecasts for the domestic investment market are very optimistic

MLP Group has released consolidated financial results for the first half of 2021, showing revenue of PLN 97.6m, up 16% year on year, and net profit of PLN 166.5m, up 38% year on year. Equity (net assets) rose 24% in the first six months of the year, to PLN 1.5bn, with gross investment property having advanced by 16%, to PLN 2.7bn.

Following the departure of Soren Rodian Olsen, who worked in Capital Markets at Cushman & Wakefield for nearly 10 years and has recently taken up a new position with a Scandinavian private equity group, a current client of Cushman & Wakefield, Jeff Alson, Head of CEE Capital Markets will be now focusing on operations in Poland as a new Head of Capital Markets Poland and will be supporting the local capital markets management team, comprising Pawel Partyka, Marcin Kocerba and Mira Kantor-Pikus. Their main area of expertise is logistics & retail, office as well as alternative sector and debt advisory respectively.

After receiving the building permit for STOP SHOP Zielona Góra, IMMOFINANZ, the owner of the STOP SHOP retail park brand, chose Mirbud as the general contractor for this project. The construction site was officially taken over by the contractor and construction works have started. The opening of the retail park with a total of 12 stores on nearly 6,700 sqm of space available for lease is planned for spring 2022.

GARBE Industrial Real Estate Poland has acquired a new flagship production and warehouse facility of Hubergroup located in Wroclaw. The parties have signed a Preliminary Purchase Agreement for a new 22,000 sqm Build-to-Suit facility, on a 20-year term sale & leaseback transaction.

Building B at the Warsaw Spark complex and Generation Park Z are the next Skanska office buildings which have received the WELL Core & Shell certificate at the Gold level from the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI). This is the fourth and fifth Skanska project certified in Central and Eastern Europe.

Poland’s largest cities only slightly adjust their planned investments due to the lower earnings caused by COVID-19. Similarly, zoning development plans are also not slowing down - as seen in talks between Urban Land Institute Poland (ULI Poland) and five cities involved in the project, “Around the city in 8 questions”. The series of discussions is expected to continue into the Fall, with another three meetings already planned.

MLP Group has received a Very Good BREEAM International New Construction certificate for its new project at the MLP Pruszków II logistics centre.

Demand for warehouses at 3.15 million sqm and new supply at 1.14 million sqm set new H1 records for the industrial market. Poland registers Europe’s second-highest developer activity with over three million sqm under construction. JLL summarised Poland’s industrial market for H1 2021.