Despite rising costs and rents, the rented residential sector continues to ride high as demand booms and is poised to remain a more lucrative investment opportunity than asset classes such as office or retail. Bonard has spoken to leading real estate specialists to investigate the factors behind the sector’s success.

Members of the panel on ESG investments at CEE Property Forum 2022 in Vienna agreed that environmental issues are addressed much better than the social and governance parts of ESG. Panellists emphasised that leading organizations in the CRE industry should give clear guidance for improving 'S' and 'G' performance at all levels.

Prices in Belgrade’s residential market are still showing double-digit increases compared to the previous year. Local real estate consultancy Cordon published a report summarising the key trends driving Belgrade’s residential market in Q2 2022.

The Czech industrial real estate market has grown up to 10.14 million sqm in size and surpassed the 10 million sqm mark. In this period, the largest real estate transaction in the history of the Czech industrial market was also registered with a yet undisclosed distributor leasing almost 234,000 sqm, Colliers reported in their last analyses.

In the first half of the year, Globalworth’s net profit significantly improved to €32.6 million (H1 2021: €12.5 million) due to a fair value gain on investment property and an increase in the share of profit of equity-accounted investments in joint ventures. Globalworth released its interim report and unaudited consolidated financial results for H1 2022.

CBRE has analysed the Czech commercial real estate market in detail and estimates that the next six months of this year will be as strong as the first six months of the year, which hit the €1.15 billion mark. By the end of the year, according to CBRE, the €2 billion level should be reached, similar to last year and the year before.

Demand for logistics real estate is not slowing in Europe, driving significant upward price growth. This development is further fuelled by increased construction and financing costs in the new-build segment. Overall, 70% of the examined European markets registered substantial growth since the end of the second half of 2021, whereas 30% saw no change in rent levels. The remarkable thing is that no region reported negative rental growth. These are some of the findings Garbe Research presented in its latest Garbe Pyramid Map, the 2022 mid-year update of the company’s yield and rent map for the 122 most important logistics real estate submarkets in 23 European countries.

Accolade Industrial Fund reported a crown appreciation of 4.23% in the second quarter of this year. For the entire first half of 2022, the fund achieved an appreciation of 5.45%. These figures were driven primarily by rental growth in the fund's portfolio of 1.2 million sqm of industrial property.  

Hungary’s high construction activity start in Q1 2022 was followed by a slowdown in Q2 2022. The EBI Construction Activity Report has found that between this April and June construction works started at a value of around HUF 800 billion. Although the value of projects entering construction decreased in Q2, these are not low numbers at all as Activity Start has been the 5th highest (on a quarterly basis) of recent years. It should be added, though, that recently construction costs have dramatically increased, massively pushing up the Activity Start indicator calculated at current prices, while at constant prices the volume would be lower.

What to invest in during times of uncertainty, war, rampant inflation and soaring interest rates? Avison Young presented its CEE commercial real estate investment market overview after the first half of 2022.