Cushman & Wakefield’s reports on the Chinese market have shed light on how the retail sector and consumers responded to challenges facing them in the new reality. What lessons should the Polish retail sector learn from them? Daniel Stańczuk, Marketing & PR Senior Communications Specialist, Asset Services, at Cushman & Wakefield wrote about trends on the Polish market and ways of tailoring strategies to the new reality.

Cordia International Zrt., as part of its international expansion strategy, has recently acquired 93% of Warsaw listed Polish residential developer Polnord S.A. through a combination of capital increase and public tender offer that was closed on 9 of April 2020. Cordia will first report the effects of such acquisition in its half-year balance sheet but has provided guidance on its positive effects on Cordia’s equity capital.

Arrow Capital Partners, an investor and operator of real estate in Europe and Asia-Pacific, has acquired the prime urban logistics asset, Airport House, in Warsaw, for its $3 billion European Strategic Industrial Real Estate (SIRE) platform. The asset has been sold by M7 Real Estate, on behalf of PVBRI, a work-out investment vehicle created by M7 and a Polish Bank to stabilise and turnaround a financially challenged portfolio of industrial, office and retail investments.

Poland’s real estate investment volume for the first half of 2020 has reached €2.9 billion which is the second-best H1 result in history. €710 million was invested in offices alone during the “pandemic quarter” with the industrial sector registering its best-ever H1 result. JLL analysed H1 2020 real estate investment transactions in Poland.  

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.

Panattoni will build another warehouse and manufacturing park in Silesia – Panattoni Park Zabrze II. The 44,000-square-metre project will be delivered in Zabrze, at the Katowice Special Economic Zone. The first customer has already leased 14,000 sqm at the park.

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.

Accolade is entering Gorzów Wielkopolski with a project worth nearly €47 million. The first stage of construction of the new BREEM certified industrial park will be completed next month. Lease agreements have already been signed by Logoplaste and Omnipack.

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.

Panattoni has completed the development of the largest warehouse facility in the Warsaw region – A2 Warsaw Park. The building, totalling close to 104,000 sqm, was delivered in Adamów, right next to the Grodzisk Mazowiecki junction on the A2 motorway. Nearly half of the space provided by the developer has been taken up.