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The first half of the “pandemic year” was most difficult for retail players, considering the lockdown during the emergency state, but the recovery up until July has been better than most market participants were initially expecting, according to Colliers International’s market report for the first semester of 2020. In the industrial & logistics area, it has been business as usual during the pandemic, with some seeing big spikes in activity, but a significant pipeline of speculative developments and a competitive market are tilting the balance in favour or tenants.

Total real estate investment volume in Slovakia in H1 2020 reached €432 million which represents a 66% increase on the same period last year, according to data by CBRE. The volume was spread among ten transactions, with the average value of the deals amounting to €43 million, compared to €27 million last year.

According to the latest report by Cresa, commercial real estate investment volume in Poland surpassed €2.85 billion, the second-best result in the country’s history. The key growth drivers were the office and industrial markets which together generated just more than 84% of the investment volume. The industrial market attracted nearly €1.08 billion worth of investments, which represented an all-time high, while the office market saw nearly €1.33 billion worth of deals, the second-best result of the segment in the history.

The first half of 2020 was the strongest on record for the warehouse and industrial market in Poland, says Savills. Despite COVID-19 challenges, take-up set an all-time high halfway through the year. In addition, the leasing volume and the amount of new space coming onto the market were higher in Q2 than in the first three months of the year.

CEE investment volumes for the first half of 2020 reached ca. €6.26 billion. This figure was boosted by two large portfolios totalling in excess of €2.2 billion, with Poland and the Czech Republic taking a 78% share of the CEE-6 total. According to Colliers International's latest report, investor appetite remains strong for CEE but a cautious approach is still being applied as markets try to settle. 

Due to the lockdown caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, most companies embraced a remote working model and scaled-down business activity. How did this affect the Polish office market? Cushman & Wakefield presented a summary of H1 2020.

Gross demand on the Polish industrial market reached 2.2 million sqm in H1 2020 which is the best result for the first half of the year in the market’s history. New leases and expansions accounted for nearly 1.7 million sqm, which is a 30% improvement y-o-y. This means that Poland is the only country in Europe to have seen net demand growth in H1 2020, according to JLL.

According to consulting company Walter Herz, the consistently expanding office market of Tri-City has the lowest vacancy rate in Poland currently and the office stock of the Tri-City agglomeration will exceed 1 million sqm after the construction of the ongoing investments is completed.

The Polish industrial market continues its strong momentum. Both take-up and supply reached high levels in H1 2020, say experts of global real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, summarising the first half of 2020 on the industrial market in Poland.

The first half of the “pandemic year” closed with a total value of investment transactions worth €408 million in Romania, around 18% above the first semester of 2019, with office assets accounting nearly 86% of volumes, according to Colliers International’s market report. Still, the outlook is uncertain since several large big-ticket items have either been frozen or fell through. On the opposite pole, the local land market continues to see deals closing and significant interest.