The Investment Services department at Colliers International has been joined by Mark Richardson as director. The new expert will be a valuable support for the team managed by Piotr Mirowski. 

According to JLL estimates, the value of the real estate investment transactions in Poland was a record-breaking €7.4 billion. This is a better result than 2018 (over €7.2 billion. The last 12 months were the best ever for the office segment, where the sales and acquisitions were worth more than €3.8 billion – over a billion euros more than the previous year.

RF CEE Real Estate SCA SICAV – RAIF, an investment fund owned by the Polish Reino Capital and Australian Corvala, has bought the Malta House office building in Poznań. Avison Young represented the seller in the transaction.

Panattoni has acquired a 14.4-hectare site at ul. Miedziana to build City Logistics Katowice. Construction works at the park, anticipated to feature 70,000 sqm at full build-out, will commence before year-end.

Neonica has finalized the sale of a plot of 1.65 ha, located at 95 Tuwima Street in Łódź. The buyer is Apartamenty Tuwima Sp.z o.o. Experts from JLL represented the vendor in the transaction process.

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.

Investment manager Corestate Capital Holding S.A. has agreed on a new partnership with Bain Capital Credit. Bain Capital Credit is a leading global credit specialist with approximately €41 billion in assets under management. The agreement establishes a financing partnership in Poland within the micro living sector, specifically to co-invest in properties and convert them into student housing. The partnership has the initial capability to develop up to €500 million GAV. The agreement also includes asset and property management contracts.

First Property Group has entered into a contract for the sale of one of its properties, a 50.3% interest in Chałubińskiego 8 (CH8), an office tower in Warsaw, Poland, at a price of €44 million. Completion of the contract is deferred until the treatment of VAT relating to the sale has been approved by the Polish tax authorities, which is expected by 31 March 2020. The name of the buyer has not been disclosed.

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.

According to JLL data, office take-up in Warsaw grew by 270,000 sqm year-on-year in Q3 2019. At the same time, 185,000 sqm of space was delivered to the market during recent months. This means that the need for additional space exceeded new supply by as much as 85,000 sqm. This impressive performance has further fueled developer activity. 790,000 sqm of space is under construction, with a significant proportion of this total already being leased.