The first three months of the year were marked by a record breaking volume of transactions amounting to more than 2.1 billion euro. This really positive result achieved in Q1 means that there is undiminished interest from investors in commercial properties in Poland, which is a good sign for the entire 2018 that now looks to have the potential to beat last year’s record.
Over the past 12 months, i.e. from the beginning of April 2017 to the end of March 2018, the commercial property market in Poland saw investors complete transactions worth a total of nearly 7 billion euro. More than half of the amount came from portfolio transactions. Q1 of this year was unquestionably dominated by the retail sector with a completion of sale and purchase transactions for the total amount of 1.78 billion euro. It should be stressed here that this year’s result achieved in Q1 through completion of retail transactions represents as much as 93% of the total transaction volume recorded in this segment for the entire last year. The purchase by the Chariot Top group, as established by the Redefine, PIMCO and Oaktree consortium, of 28 retail properties located across Poland (M1 and Power Centre shopping centres and free standing Auchan, Bi1 and Praktiker schemes) from Apollo Rida / Axa / Ares, was completed soon after the champagne corks had popped on New Year’s Day. The transaction worth approx. 1 billion euro, an amount not recorded in Poland before with regard to one single transaction, will be written into the history books of the domestic investment market.
The boom in the warehouse and logistics sector also continues. Following last year’s purchase of Logicor’s European portfolio, the first three months of this year saw completion of another considerable portfolio transaction. Ares Management was the buyer of Prologis properties located in several countries in Europe. Authors of the report at BNP Paribas Real Estate Poland stress that the result achieved by the sector in Q1 reached 135 million euro, which means that it was only slightly lower than the usually superior result achieved by office transactions.
