CPI Property Group reported first-quarter profit growth of 243 percent year-on-year to €381 million (roughly CZK 9.4 billion). It was able to do so thanks to its takeover of Austria's Immofinanz, which owns a number of commercial properties. CPI now owns 76.86 percent of the shares in this Austrian company. As a result, CPI is currently the Central European leader in real estate and is planning further expansion with the Austrian real estate company S Immo, where it now controls 42.6 per cent along with Immofinanz.

Geopolitical and economic challenges are not leaving the commercial real estate market unaffected. But how will these major global changes impact the Czech investment market in 2022? This is the question an expert panel, moderated by Mark Richardson (Colliers), at Prague Property Forum 2022 tried to answer.

According to Newmark Polska, Poland’s total warehouse and industrial stock surpassed the 25 million sqm mark, representing a 16.6% increase in the same period in 2021. New supply in the first three months of this year reached close to 1.3 million sqm, the best quarterly result in the history of the Polish market.

Actual sales prices of real estate in the Slovak Republic reached high growth at the beginning of the year, mainly due to rising sales prices of new houses and flats, the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic announced.

Cushman & Wakefield has released a report summarizing the first quarter of 2022 on the Polish industrial market. According to its data, total warehouse take-up in the first three months of this year reached 1.56 million sqm while the development pipeline hit a record 4.8 million sqm.

According to Savills latest research, over 5.7 million sqm of new office space will be completed in Europe in 2022, of which 49% is currently pre-let. In Warsaw, Savills forecasts that a rebound in demand and an undersupply of new office stock will translate into visibly shrinking availability.

Immofinanz’s like-for-like rental income rose by 4.3% in the first quarter of 20221, the occupancy rate remained high at 94.4%, and FFO 1 before tax was stable at a very good level of €34.4 million. Net profit totalled €72.4 million, compared with a substantial positive effect in the first quarter of the previous year from the revaluation of the stake in S Immo. With an equity ratio of 52.3% and a conservative debt level with a net LTV of 32.7%, Immofinanz has a strong capital foundation.

With profitable sales of non-strategic properties and good progress in the implementation of the development pipeline, CA Immo's operating performance remained stable in the first quarter, seamlessly from the previous quarters. The strong sales result combined with lower indirect costs led to an increase in operating profit of around 6%. In addition, a significant increase in revaluation results helped to more than triple consolidated net income compared with the previous year.

The volume of investment deals in the Polish market of industrial and logistics properties in the first quarter of 2022 was €191 million. And although the current economic situation and the high level of uncertainty related to the war in Ukraine pose new challenges for the logistics sector, in the long term, there will be no significant changes in terms of the volume of demand and supply. However, the growth rate of this part of the market may be lower than in previous years, according to the 7R and Colliers report “Logistics and Industrial Sector: Development Paths from the 2022 Perspective”.

As governments across Europe are ending Covid-related restrictions, business must also redefine their workplace strategies. Forcing people to return to the office full-time after long months of lockdowns might not be the most effective strategy and the idea of a full-time WFH also only works in very specific cases, says flex office provider New Work in its latest analysis.