Commercial property investment in the CEE region is set to fall to just EUR 1 bn this year, Tomasz Trzoslo, head of Capital Markets Central Europe at Jones Lang LaSalle, told PropertyEU in an interview during the EXPO REAL fair in Munich.
Commercial property investment in the CEE region is set to fall to just EUR 1 bn this year, Tomasz Trzoslo, head of Capital Markets Central Europe at Jones Lang LaSalle, told PropertyEU in an interview during the EXPO REAL fair in Munich.
The figure represents an 83% drop compared to investment volumes of around EUR 6 bn in 2008 and an even bigger decline compared to 2007 levels of around EUR 12 bn.
'The Polish property market saw as little as four transactions take place in the first half of the year', Trzoslo said. 'We are back to 2002 investment levels'. He noted, however, that investment activity has been picking up in the second half of 2009 after a very slow start to the year. ‘We see that international investors are returning to the CEE market and investment activities are likely to increase over the rest of the year,’ Trozslo added.
Potential buyers that have been looking at the market over the past months include German open-ended funds, Spezialfondsen, value-added investment vehicles and opportunity funds, he said. Looking ahead, Trzoslo expects investment volumes to grow further in 2010, reaching up to EUR 4 bn across the CEE region.
