Horațiu Florescu, Chairman & CEO of Knight Frank Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece & Serbia spoke to Property Forum about the emphasis on the hybrid concept in the local real estate market and Romania's ability to attract more institutional real estate investors.

The Czech state continues to unsuccessfully trying to sell Prague's functionalist Broadway Palace from the 1930s. The Office for Representation of the State in Property Matters (ÚZSVM) offered it for the third time in an electronic auction, this time with a starting price of CZK 1.05 billion (€43.153 million), but no one took part in the auction, a spokeswoman for the office told the Czech News Agency.

Czech investment and development group Trigema has bought a 51% stake in CenovaMapa.org, the market leader in online real estate valuation. Its founder, Hyposervis, retains 49% of the company. Following the acquisition, the parties did not disclose the amount. The newly created real estate data provider has been renamed Dataligence.

A record-breaking volume of investments in commercial real estate in Slovakia was realized in the first half of the year 2022. Total investments exceeded €600 million. The record volume is largely due to the transfer of part of Penta´s original portfolio to the new developer Alto Real Estate. It influences the statistics so the office buildings gained a position of the dominant segment with around 70% share of all investments. The share of domestic capital is representing almost 70% of the total volume of transactions. Within the context of rising inflation and increasing interest rates, analysts consider yields to be bottoming out without space for further compression. Slovakia continues to maintain its reputation as a safe investment location with competitive yields, according to Cushman & Wakefield's latest report.

Actual sales prices of real estate in the Slovak Republic reached high growth at the beginning of the year, mainly due to rising sales prices of new houses and flats, the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic announced.

pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank has provided a €118 million credit facility to REICO ČS NEMOVITOSTNÍ, the biggest open-ended real estate fund on the Czech market, managed by REICO, an investment company of Česká spořitelna. The facility will be used to fund the acquisition of two newly built logistic properties in Upper Silesia as well as for the refinancing of an office building in Warsaw.

For the first quarter of 2022, the growth of the Czech industrial market and the recovery of industrial production were not stopped even by outages in the supply chains. This quarter also continued to see a sharp rise in rents in almost the entire country. The market for industrial premises will continue to grow, but over the year the full effects of the war in Ukraine will be felt and construction may slow down slightly, reports Colliers.

Romanian developer Studium Green has purchased a property portfolio from Immobiliare Italo Romena, a subsidiary of former Italian lender Veneto Banca, for an undisclosed sum. 

WOOD & Company Real Estate Fund will acquire the Astrum Business Park office building in Warsaw from Prochem S.A. and the LFI investment fund, marking the Fund’s first real estate acquisition in Poland. The building has a total leasable area of over 23,000 sqm and is fully leased. The transaction is subject to the tax ruling procedure, the company announces on its website.

The Česká Spořitelna Real Estate Fund (Nemovitostní fond České spořitelny) is buying the Bořislavka Centrum shopping and office complex from KKCG Real Estate Group. With the acquisition, the fund has increased the number of buildings under its management to 21 and the value of its real estate portfolio exceeds CZK 38 billion, REICO announced in a press release. The parties didn't disclose the transaction price.