Institutional investors targeting CEE have so far focused exclusively on good, prime assets in Poland and the Czech Republic, but a forecast lack of product in these markets may soon force investors to turn their attention to other type of products or even other CEE countries. Due to the scarcity of prime stock on the market, institutional investors are expected to start rethinking their strategies in the near future, switching their focus to core assets in secondary markets in Poland and the Czech Republic, or re-entering other CEE countries such as Slovakia, Romania and Hungary.

Institutional investors targeting CEE have so far focused exclusively on good, prime assets in Poland and the Czech Republic, but a forecast lack of product in these markets may soon force investors to turn their attention to other type of products or even other CEE countries. Due to the scarcity of prime stock on the market, institutional investors are expected to start rethinking their strategies in the near future, switching their focus to core assets in secondary markets in Poland and the Czech Republic, or re-entering other CEE countries such as Slovakia, Romania and Hungary.

'Investors may be forced to re-define their property investment requirements quite soon if they want to allocate equity to Central Europe in 2010,' Pavel Schanka, head of CBRE's capital markets team told PropertyEU in an interview during the Mipim property fair in Cannes.

According to Schanka, new sources of capital are also seeking to enter the Central and Eastern European property market in the wake of growth prospects for the sector. Institutional investors from Japan, Korea, China and Singapore are considering putting fresh equity into new investment vehicles launched by a number of leading European investment managers.

'Investment in CEE was previously carried out through specific CEE funds but lately we are starting to see that investment managers are taking the region into account in their pan-European investment vehicles,' he said.