The Vice-President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) Teresa Czerwińska and the acting Managing Director of EIB Global, Markus Berndt, spoke at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano and shared the EIB’s views on Ukraine’s recovery. They reaffirmed the EU Bank's steadfast position on the importance and urgency of investing in Ukraine's European future, even as fighting continues across the country. Emphasising its support for the recovery plan presented at the conference, the EIB offered a new instrument, the EU-Ukraine Gateway Trust Fund. This financing instrument could support Ukraine’s early and long-term recovery and the country’s journey towards EU membership.

The logistic real estate market of Ukraine has been seriously damaged during the military aggression on the part of the Russian Federation. Warehouses are subjected to targeted attacks, as they are regarded by the aggressor as strategic objects, providing logistics, delivery of food and essential goods. On the territory of the Kyiv region, warehouse and logistics complexes with a total area of about 382,000 square meters were destroyed, writes Iryna Nastych summarised the situation in an article prepared by the Ukrainian Real Estate Club for Property Forum.

Duna House has released its monthly transaction estimate, showing that there were 10,859 residential property transactions in Hungary in June 2022. This marks a 13% decline over May and a 20% drop compared to the number of transactions recorded last June.

A record-breaking volume of investments in commercial real estate in Slovakia was realized in the first half of the year 2022. Total investments exceeded €600 million. The record volume is largely due to the transfer of part of Penta´s original portfolio to the new developer Alto Real Estate. It influences the statistics so the office buildings gained a position of the dominant segment with around 70% share of all investments. The share of domestic capital is representing almost 70% of the total volume of transactions. Within the context of rising inflation and increasing interest rates, analysts consider yields to be bottoming out without space for further compression. Slovakia continues to maintain its reputation as a safe investment location with competitive yields, according to Cushman & Wakefield's latest report.

The total stock of SBU (Small Business Units) / LML (Last Mile Logistics) space in the CEE-15 countries accounts for over 3 million sqm, but the development of this market is not evenly spread in this region. The largest amount of space is located in Poland (circa about 2 million sqm), reveals a new report by Colliers.

Previous optimism over the prospect of the construction market in the Southeast European region is gone, the Eastern European Construction Forecasting Association (EECFA) reports. The current forecast is foreshadowing almost no growth until 2023 and contraction in 2024. The main reason behind is the worsening climate for construction due to the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

What does the future hold for offices? A group of experts, that took part in the first edition of our European ESG Property Forum, claim that the whole industry is switching to remote work and smaller offices located closer to employees` homes. The event was held by Property Forum on June 1st in Warsaw.

The year 2021 has recorded over 65,000 sqm of the space in newly completed retail parks. This is the highest growth of the retail space in the Czech Republic in five years. Behind this success, there is mainly the stable interest among shoppers, long-term lease contracts and tenant expansion as also a surge of interest among investors. Nevertheless, the higher costs are now slowing the construction of the new retail parks. Therefore, a boost in the demand for space and likely push up rents as well are expected, states Cushman & Wakefield in their last report.

7R, a Polish developer specialising in providing warehouse and industrial space, has published its first ESG report, setting sustainable development goals until 2025. The company's priority is to strive for climate neutrality and to support customers in this regard. 7R declares that ESG is the foundation of its operations and is part of a long-term strategy of increasing the value of the company itself and its products, which benefits tenants, investors, local communities and employees.

Investment into the European logistics real estate market remained strong in Q1 2022 and experienced a y-o-y growth of 19.6%. The growth of 28% above the five years average has experienced the leased warehouse space. The biggest change occupiers anticipate as a result of the pandemic is the shortening, or reshoring, of supply chains to mitigate risk. Also, the war in Ukraine and China´s lockdowns has driven the demand to record levels, indicates Savills in their last European Logistics Outlook published today.