Central and Eastern European cities have further increased their presence at the largest property event in Europe. Investment markets are booming and this is clearly visible when looking around the stands of Hungarian, Polish, Czech and Romanian cities. Our takeaway from CEE themed panel discussions at Expo Real.

Immofinanz has completed and opened a further shopping centre under its Vivo! retail brand in the Polish city of Krosno. Vivo! Krosno has approx. 21,000 sqm of rentable space and is fully occupied. This shopping centre expands Immofinanz‘s Vivo! portfolio to ten locations in four countries with more than 314,000 sqm of rentable space.

REICO, Česká spořitelna’s real estate fund manager, expanded its Polish portfolio by the acquisition of the Galeria Sloneczna shopping centre in Radom. The value of the fund’s new acquisition is approximately €164 million (CZK 4.3 billion). The seller is an American insurance group that developed the asset in a joint venture partnership with AIG/Lincoln (now White Star Real Estate).

CA Immo signed and closed a sales and purchase agreement to acquire Building B of the Warsaw Spire office complex, comprising of 21,600 sqm GLA. The transaction volume of the fully rented asset amounts to around €100 million, the annual gross rental income reaches around € 6 million. With this transaction, CA Immo fulfils one of the last strategic and budgeted targets announced for 2017.

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.