Iceland, Sweden and Norway show top potential for hyperscale and cloud-scale data centre investment, followed closely by Denmark and the Netherlands according to research from Savills. The CEE region is also becoming more important in strategic plans for key players, with Poland having the potential of being in its heart.

Arcadis, an international consultancy company focused on building industry, environment and sustainable growth, summarised the current development on the Czech industrial property market in the context of the second wave of coronavirus pandemic.

Total modern warehouse stock in Poland exceeded 20 million sqm in Q3, with a further 1.5 million sqm currently underway despite the pandemic. Occupier activity was at the second-highest level on record in Q3 2020, reaching 1.22 million sqm (+49% y/y). Overall, 3.5 million sqm has been leased since the start of the year. Investor sentiment also remains robust, as testified by a record volume of transactions signed so far in 2020. Axi Immo presented its report on the Polish warehouse market in Q3 2020.

The Romanian logistics market will have a record demand by the end of 2020, with a transactional volume exceeding the 700,000 square meters threshold, amid the accelerated development of e-commerce and the positioning of Bucharest as a regional logistics hub for a series of international retailers, according to Cushman & Wakefield Echinox.

Seven experts discussed investment and financing strategies for the new normal at the online edition of Prague Property Forum 2020. How has the investment market changed in the last 6-8 months? What major changes have been observed in investment and financing preferences? We summarised the highlights of the discussion, moderated by Luke Dawson (Colliers International).

Hungary’s rental property market had an uneven month as prices were on average 5% lower than a year earlier according to the joint Rent Index of the Central Statistical Office (KSH) and real estate portal ingatlan.com. Rents were down 0.7% compared to August in Budapest in September, the last month of the season, while prices in other regions in Hungary remained level.

The office market in Bucharest continues to grow, with 124,000 of modern office space delivered in the first nine months of the year ​​388,000 sqm more in the pipeline, according to Cushman & Wakefield Echinox. The commercial stock of office buildings in Bucharest reaches about 2.9 million square meters with an additional 150,000 sqm of owner-occupied stock.

The number of state-owned companies relying on modern office space is on the rise, reveals Savills. The public sector and state-owned firms more than doubled their share in office take-up in Warsaw in Q1-Q3 2020 compared to last year. What’s more, Savills estimates that negotiations are pending for more than the amount of office space leased by this sector in the nine months to September 2020.

In previous quarters the analysts of the EBI Construction Activity Report broadly discussed the negative effects of the pandemic on Hungary’s construction industry. The latest figures also suggest that there is still no improvement in the sector after a weak first half of the year.

238,300 sqm of office space was delivered to the Warsaw office market in the first three quarters of 2020, reveals Cushman & Wakefield. Due to the worsening sentiment of market participants, prime headline rents edged down by €0.25/sqm/month, standing at €23.75/sqm/month in the centre and at €14.75/sqm/month in non-central locations.