New foreign real estate financiers are in the process of moving to establish direct lending business in the buoyant Polish market. 'We've had a number of requests from new lenders,' Tony Pinnell, a Warsaw-based director of property finance at Colliers International, confirmed to PropertyEU.
New foreign real estate financiers are in the process of moving to establish direct lending business in the buoyant Polish market. 'We've had a number of requests from new lenders,' Tony Pinnell, a Warsaw-based director of property finance at Colliers International, confirmed to PropertyEU.
He declined to name the three banks Colliers has spoken to recently but confirmed they include interest from Germany. One of the three banks has already received the green light to start operations. Pinnell said that, typically, the newcomers have had passive participation in Polish real estate lending through membership of a syndicate, but Pricing shifts have made it more attractive to lend directly.
Another driver is that some banks are taking a more active look at Poland after pulling out of other markets on the European periphery, like Spain and Italy.
A survey conducted by Colliers late last year among 45 lenders to Polish real estate indicated €5 bn of senior financing was provided to core, non-core and development property in 2011. Many of the banks are subsidiaries of non-Polish banks or German banks such as pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank, Aareal and Eurohypo.
Read more in the October edition of PropertyEU Magazine.
