Total take-up on the Bratislava office market reached 84,000 sqm in Q4 2017, having tripled compared to the previous quarter. The vacancy rate continued to decline and reached 6.18%. The Bratislava Research Forum published its office market statistics for Q4 2017.

ZFP Investments, the Czech-based subsidiary of Slovak IAD Investments, has concluded the acquisition of the Kotlarska 11 office building in Kraków on behalf of ZFP Real Estate Fund. This marks the investor’s entry into the Polish market.

JLL has appointed Peter Nitschneider as Country Manager of its Slovak business, based in Bratislava, with effect from 1 January 2018.

YIT has sold housing projects in Prague, the Czech Republic and in Bratislava, Slovakia to YCE Housing I fund. The value of the projects is approximately €50 million, and the sales are recorded in the last quarter of the year.

A Slovak private equity group has disposed of a 6,800 sqm hypermarket in Liptovský Mikuláš with an exceptionally long lease with Tesco to a Czech private investor, Cushman & Wakefield announced on Twitter.

2017 has not ended yet, but it is safe to say that it has been a record year for the CEE property market. The period of strong growth is not over yet, market sentiment is positive and all signs point to 2018 bringing new opportunities for expansion in the property business. In times like these it is especially important to find the time to share knowledge and make new connections, which is why Property Forum will continue to provide a meeting point for the CEE property industry. In 2018 Property Forum events will be held in Bratislava, Bucharest, Prague, Vienna and – for the first time – in Warsaw.

Polish Enterprise Fund VII, a private equity fund managed by Enterprise Investors (EI), has signed an agreement to acquire 100% of shares in CBA Slovakia a.s., an independent food retailer in Slovakia. The total value of the transaction has not been disclosed. As part of the deal, EI will provide €16 million additional equity funding to deleverage the business and finance expansion.

Investment flows into the CEE-6 region’s commercial real estate markets rose 12% y-o-y in the first nine months of 2017. The €7.6 billion closed deal total coupled with a still full pipeline of deals under consideration suggests that the annual cycle high of €12.2 billion invested last year is likely to be matched or overhauled. Substantial growth in Czech and Bulgarian volumes were the drivers of the momentum in the January-September 2017 period, says Colliers International in its latest report.

The office markets of Central European capitals are growing dynamically with the number of new leases on the rise and vacancy rates hitting record lows in several cities. In light of all this it is no surprise that development activity is also heating up on the most popular markets of the region.

At the beginning of summer 2016, a production and distribution complex owned by one of the largest non-alcoholic beverage producers Coca-Cola HBC Czech and Slovak Republics, was added to the Slovak industrial market. The complex, which offers approximately 30,000 sqm of leasable area with ca. 35,000 sqm of adjacent land for further development was exclusively marketed by the Industrial Agency team in JLL Slovakia. From October 2017 the new owner is Priemyselný areál Lúka s.r.o. The value of the transaction remains confidential.