Round Hill Capital announced that funds advised by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities and Round Hill Capital have exchanged contracts to sell the shares of a residential property portfolio in the Czech Republic owned and operated by Residomo to Heimstaden Bostad AB for a total purchase price of €1.3 billion.

Hungarian real estate brokerage firm Duna House has bought a loan broker in Poland for €1 million (PLN 4.3 million) and expect the deal to increase the volume of brokered loans in Poland by approximately 60%, the company announced on the Budapest Stock Exchange website.

In 2019, the Polish housing market experienced an acceleration and increase of projects in the rental and private student housing sectors. Poland is still on the radar of large foreign investors and some of them have been able to conclude spectacular deals. Although potential institutional buyers still aren’t able to purchase turn-key portfolios on an expected scale, and entering the market mostly means building new stock, the institutional rental sector is drawing more and more interest and will undoubtedly become a desired category of safe assets in 2020.

The Catella European Residential (CER) Fund has acquired a mixed-use development project of residential apartments and student accommodation in the Polish city of Kraków for around €20 million from U.S. developer Hines.

Retail developer Apsys Polska has started preparing its first residential project, which will be built in Warsaw’s Mokotów area in a joint venture with an undisclosed partner.

CBRE was assigned to provide property management services for the projects developed by the company One United Properties in the north of Bucharest, namely the office building One Tower and the residential complex One Mircea Eliade, which comprise a total area of 24,000 square meters offices and 247 high-end apartments. The portfolio managed by CBRE now exceeds 800,000 square meters.

Golub GetHouse has finalised the sale of a 170-metre-high residential tower with apartments for rent planned on the plot at ul. Grzybowska 59 in Warsaw to LRC Group. The residential high-rise to be delivered by Golub GetHouse will feature 900 units for rent.

Via a subsidiary, TAG Immobilien AG signed an investment agreement to acquire 100% of the shares in Vantage Development S.A. with a simultaneous carve-out of its commercial real estate business which will be repurchased by the selling shareholders. The total transaction consideration amounts to c. €131 million, of which c. €46 million relate to the commercial real estate business unit. As a result, the total net consideration for TAG amounts to c. €85 million for the residential business and platform of Vantage Development.

Sales numbers for new housing units in Warsaw in the first three quarters of 2019 amounted to 17,500, which was an increase of 7% y-o-y. In 7 out of 18 districts in the capital, the average prices of units on offer exceeded €2,500 (PLN 11,000) per sqm, according to JLL.

One of the region’s most active investment managers, Griffin Real Estate has ambitious plans to further expand its portfolio in several market segments, potentially outside of Poland as well. Stanislav Frnka, the company’s Senior Partner has talked to Property Forum at Expo Real about Griffin’s investment strategy and the asset classes they’re exploring.