Hungary's construction output in March was 11.5% higher than in the previous month, the Central Statistical Office (KSH) said on Thursday. Hungary’s construction industry has corrected the February slump and the rising trend remained unbroken, but the pre-crisis peaks are still some way off.

GTC’s rental and service revenues decreased by €3.8 million to €37 million in Q1 2021 from €41 million in Q1 2020. Profit before tax and fair value adjustments for Q1 2021 reached €15 million, up from €13 million in Q1 2020. The company published its financial results for Q1 2021.

The latest EBI Construction Activity Report has found that the stagnation of the total value of started construction works has not stopped. Between January and March 2021, construction works in the sector started on HUF 421 billion. This, although not greatly different from the values seen in the previous three quarters, is still the lowest Activity Start indicator of the last two years. Compared to the January-March periods of the previous two years, 2021 started clearly weaker: against the positive Q1 2020, the decline was about 35%, but even over the same period in 2019, there is a 15% decrease.

In its first financial results announcement since the IPO in March 2021, CTP recorded a 16.9% growth of net rental income in Q1 2021 vs Q1 2020, increasing its market share in its core CEE markets to 24% by the end of Q1 2021 and more than doubling leasing activity to 397,000 sqm GLA (compared to 184,000 sqm in Q1 2020).

Cushman & Wakefield has summarised Q1 2021 on the Polish investment market. According to the firm’s experts, this year got off to a positive start, with investment volumes 10% above the five-year average for pre-pandemic first quarters.

Real estate group Duna House estimates the number of residential property deals completed in Hungary to have reached 13,511 in April 2021. Although this is a slight decrease compared to the pre-pandemic peak in the same month of 2019, overall it is still the third strongest April in the last ten years.

During the last six years, between 2015 and 2020, the Serbian construction industry rolled out into one of the strongest growth cycles in recent history. The powerful surge in construction outputs surpassed all initial expectations, and there are a number of converging factors behind its formidable result. The recovery after the recession gradually transformed itself into a fully-fledged construction boom, which more than doubled Serbia’s construction output, from €2 billion in 2015 to €4 billion in 2019. Even the pandemic in 2020 didn’t change the very positive outlook, although it did cause a slowdown and negative consolidation of construction outputs by some 5% at constant prices. The expected growth should return in 2021, however. The EECFA (Eastern European Construction Forecasting Association) has released its latest article about the Serbian construction industry, written by Dejan Krajinović, Beobuild Core D.O.O.

A total investment volume of €290 million was transacted in the Czech Republic during the first quarter of 2021, according to Savills’ latest research. Without the exceptional €1.3 billion Residomo portfolio sale transaction, the investment volume was only down by 8% y-o-y.

The Hungarian residential rental property market continues to be a mixed bag based on current asking prices, according to the latest monthly survey of real estate portal ingatlan.com, which presents the latest joint rent index of ingatlan.com and the Central Statistical Office (KSH) for March and summarises the supply and average rent as of the end of April based on 40,000 ads.

According to Colliers, CEE investment flows are down by almost 48% on Q1 2020, at ca. €2.0 billion. Despite the slow start, 2021 year-end volumes are estimated to accelerate to reach similar levels to 2020, of around €10.0 billion.