The condition of the Kraków office sector has been defined by successive records in recent years. It is the largest regional office market in Poland, the second city after Warsaw, which in 2017 crossed the one million sqm threshold, and the main location for BPO/SSC companies in Central and Eastern Europe. However, the global pandemic, which affected all segments of the economy, undoubtedly also affected the office sector. How? According to JLL’s latest report, in the first half of the year, demand for offices in Kraków was about 15% lower than H1 2019. In addition, the increase in remote working has prompted some employers to reorganize their offices.

Approximately 1.22 million new residencies were built in Romania between 1990 and 2019, representing only 13.4% of the total dwellings stock calculated by the National Institute of Statistics, so the residential stock is mainly composed of apartments built under the communist regime, having a low degree of comfort in most cases, according to an analysis realised by Cushman & Wakefield Echinox real estate consulting company.

CTP Group recorded a profit of €99 million (more than CZK 2.5 billion) in the first half of 2020, while its Portfolio of Class A property under management grew to over 5.8 million sqm. During the first six months of the year, CTP Group added 268,926 sqm of lettable area to its portfolio, and plans to grow by additional 595,000 sqm by year-end. The pandemic has transformed the nature of demand, but rental incomes increased in the second quarter.

The construction sector in Bulgaria, and building construction in particular, was not affected as hard as others by the COVID-19 crisis, according to a report by the Eastern European Construction Forecasting Association.

Globalworth’s revenue and net operating income rose by 9.9% to €114.0 million and by 17.1% to €79.6 million as compared to H1 2019, respectively, mainly due to the acquisition of standing properties in Poland and completion of the development of properties in Romania. Globalworth has published its interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2020.

Warburg-HIH Invest Real Estate is improving the carbon footprint of its portfolio within the scope of its ESG strategy. The real estate portfolio is gradually being converted to an environmentally-friendly supply of electricity from ecological sources and heat from carbon-neutral natural gas. In joint undertaking with the Hamburg-based energy provider Lichtblick, a total of 126 properties are currently being converted to the use of green electricity. This will allow for a reduction of carbon emissions in the portfolio by around 7,500 tonnes annually. Warburg-HIH Invest will also be gradually converting its entire European real estate portfolio to green electricity.

Over 80% of industrial occupiers are asking about sustainable warehouse solutions and 60% of them would like their facilities to be green-certified, reveals Cushman & Wakefield in its Industrial Goes Green report on sustainability in the industrial sector.

The recent transactions closed in the last weeks, with a total value of €400 million, demonstrate that the investment market in Romania remains strong and attractive even in the COVID-19 pandemic period, Romania no longer being just seen as just a fringe market of Central Europe, according to Cushman & Wakefield Echinox.

Retail parks have been the biggest beneficiaries of the structural retail changes in Poland over the last ten years. Their number has doubled and increased their share in total retail stock by 4 pps. In H1 2020, developers completed nearly 148,000 sqm of modern retail space in large scale projects (GLA>5,000 sqm). Of this new supply, 67% was delivered in the shape of eight new retail parks and three extensions of existing schemes. Almost 450,000 sqm of GLA is still under construction with initial completion dates set for 2020 and 2021. Retail parks account for nearly 26% of this volume. JLL and Trei Real Estate Poland summarised the situation regarding these projects at the end of H1 2020, and outlined the development prospects for this commercial real estate sector in Poland.

Six investors, representing the most active players of the Slovak property market, discussed the experiences of the pandemic period and shared future strategies at Bratislava Property Forum 2020, an annual event co-organised by Property Forum and RICS.