Commercial real estate investments in Romania totalled €916 million in 2021, up only 0.2% compared to the previous year, marked by several transactions valued at more than €50 million in the office, retail and industrial segments, according to real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield Echinox. 

Sales of lands, homes and apartments in Romania rose by a yearly rate of 16% to 698,756 units in 2021, with a peak of 74,429 transactions recorded in December, according to the National Agency for Cadastre and Real Estate Publicity (ANCPI). 

The volume of land transactions for commercial and residential projects totaled €800 million in 2021, which is a 15-year high, according to real estate consultancy Colliers. Retailers and residential developers have generated roughly 90% of the deals. 

Properties in the mountain tourist areas have become more interesting for investors, according to a report by Savills, with demand having grown significantly in the first quarter of this year. 

Dan Petrescu, 68, has died on Sunday shortly after the private jet he was piloting crashed near an airport in Milan.

Oana Partenie, Head of Property Management Romania at Ceres Management Services spoke with Property Forum about the challenges of property management and the resilience of retail parks in the pandemic economy.

The geopolitical diversity of the EMEA region means that there are multiple economic and business permutations to consider in light of a new first term for President Biden and the Democratic party. There is a strong likelihood that the EU and national EEA (European Economic Area) governments will cooperate more openly with the United States under President Biden. Outside of the EEA, in Middle East, Africa, Russia and Turkey ongoing relationships will be more mixed.

The latest Property Talks event, organised virtually by RICS Hungary, focused on renewable and alternative energy sources and their role in the built environment. Eight real estate experts shared their insight on this topic in the form of six presentations and one panel discussion.

Banks in Europe are expecting a slow recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and while they forecast that hotel and retail loan portfolios will likely be hit more considerably than office and other real estate asset classes, the majority of them believes that the impairment will be in the range of a few percentage points up to 10% in total. These are some of the early findings from the COVID-specific section of this year's edition of KPMG's Property Lending Barometer, due to be published in autumn 2020.

Although the coronavirus pandemic has the world (and the property sector) facing an unprecedented challenge, one positive consequence seems to be certain – it is going to accelerate the adaptation of technology. Property Forum asked three people in proptech to share their thoughts on how COVID-19 is going to impact the way we work and connect to each other.