White Star Real Estate and its partner, an investment fund of a major US university have completed the acquisition of Liberty Technology Park Cluj from Fribourg Development, the real estate division of Fribourg Capital. Liberty Technology Park comprises 18,000 sqm of former industrial buildings. The five Class A office buildings are BREEAM certified. Located north of the city, the park has a number of IT&C and R&D tenants, such as Siemens, IBM, Majorel and Altran.

CBRE promotes Tudor Ionescu as Head of Advisory & Transaction Services for the office sector of CBRE Romania. The nomination of Tudor, a professional architect, specialised in workplace consultancy, represents a change of strategy of CBRE, which becomes the first real estate company focusing on the experience of users in office spaces.

Having benefitted from predominantly business-driven demand in the past, Bucharest is currently establishing itself as a popular tourist destination. The analysis of Christie & Co shows a positive growth trend both in supply and demand, resulting in a continuously improving performance of Bucharest’s hotel market.

Element Industrial announced the completion of the first phase at ELI PARK 1 Chitila. The warehouse, with an area of 20,000 sqm is rented to Turkish-based appliances producer, Arctic. The company has already begun its operations in the new logistics space.

French AEW Europe and Hungarian Indotek Group have concluded an agreement regarding the acquisition of the Promenada shopping centre in Târgu Mureș, Romania. The 50,000 sqm building’s tenants include Auchan, Leroy Merlin, Decathlon, H&M, Cinema City, LC Waikiki, New Yorker, Hervis and Media Galaxy. Indotek Group plans to renovate and modernize the whole building and plans further acquisitions to strengthen its presence on the Romanian commercial real estate market.

Cordia is now increasing its capital exports and foreign investments. In addition to the Romanian and Polish market, the company also has presence in Spain with a pilot project. All of this fits into Cordia’s strategy to become a dominant property developer at European level, while maintaining Hungary's key role in the company’s operation.

The One Cotroceni Park project, developed by One United Properties in Bucharest on a 5.8 hectares land plot, will give a new dimension to the Work - Live - Shop concept on the local market, offering a 15,000 square meters retail area, comparable to that of a medium-sized shopping centre, to the future employees and residents who will live within the project.

P3 has signed new leasing contracts with two companies in Romania, Coca-Cola HBC Romania and Mobexpert. The total space leased by the two companies in P3 Bucharest A1 park is of 5,000 sqm.

According to the latest RICS Commercial Property Monitor, CEE countries – most notably the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania – are still global leaders in occupier and investment sentiment. The Central European region’s most mature market, Austria is on a different path, however, with respondents reporting a broadly flat outlook.

Labour shortage and rising costs in construction are problems developers in CEE have had to learn to live with over the past years. Dr. Zoltán Nádasdy MRICS, Partner, Head of CEE Real Estate Investments Group at Noerr talked to Property Forum about the legal challenges investors and developers face on the Hungarian, Romanian and Polish markets.