The office market in Bucharest and in the major regional cities of Romania - Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, Iași and Brașov - continues to develop, with local and foreign investors having projects under construction or scheduled for delivery with an area of approximately 500,000 square meters that will be put into use in the next 16 months, according to Cushman & Wakefield Echinox.

Czech real estate developer RC Europe has opened its third retail park in Romania, following an investment of €9 million. The retail park, operating under the Nest brand, is located in Oradea, occupying approximately 6.500 sqm GLA. Construction works on the project started in October 2019.

CC Trust Group AG, a family office owned by the Swiss serial entrepreneur Claudio Cisullo, and Romanian property developer One United Properties, owned by local entrepreneurs Victor Căpitanu and Andrei Diaconescu, have launched a global private equity firm in Switzerland.

Polish company Scallier is developing a new chain of retail parks in small and medium-sized Romanian cities under the Funshop Park brand. By 2022, 6 facilities with a total leasable area of ​​40,000 sqm will be completed. Work is currently underway to prepare further investments. Scallier, based in Poznań, has been operating on the Polish market for nearly a decade and specializes in investment management in the sector of small and medium-sized commercial facilities.

The market of industrial spaces in the west of Romania, respectively in the counties of Timiș, Arad and Bihor, continues to attract the attention of investors, after doubling its volume in the last ten years, ranking second after Bucharest. CBRE recently advised pan-European developer VGP on the acquisition of a 39-ha land plot in Arad. 

Real estate developer Hagag Development Europe finished construction works – refurbishing and reconversion – for its office project H Victoriei 109 in Bucharest. The building will be delivered following the final reception protocol. Up to the present time, 50% of the GLA has been contracted.

Developer Prime Kapital and investment partner MAS Real Estate have opened 33,000 sqm GLA Dâmboviţa Mall shopping centre in the city Târgoviște, 80 km northwest of Bucharest.

Romanian online retailer eMAG is investing €90 million in a new logistics centre near Bucharest. Construction works for the 130,000 sqm facility will begin this month and completion is scheduled for September next year. By July 2022, all automations and technologies at the centre should be operational.

Romania's real estate investment volume amounted to approx. €395 million in the first six months of 2020, a value 17% higher than the same period of the previous year, according to CBRE. Office buildings were the properties most sought after by investors, accounting for 88% of the volume traded and other similar projects are available for sale, totaling over €350 million.

The first half of the “pandemic year” was most difficult for retail players, considering the lockdown during the emergency state, but the recovery up until July has been better than most market participants were initially expecting, according to Colliers International’s market report for the first semester of 2020. In the industrial & logistics area, it has been business as usual during the pandemic, with some seeing big spikes in activity, but a significant pipeline of speculative developments and a competitive market are tilting the balance in favour or tenants.