Online trading affects real estate market in Poland

China will be the first country in the world to sell more via the Internet than traditional sales. Global research firm eMarketer forecasts e-commerce in China will reach 52 percent of total retail sales this year. This is an impressive increase from 44.8 percent in 2020 and 1 percent in 2008. South Korea is second with a much lower figure of 28.9 percent. In Europe, the most developed e-commerce market is the United Kingdom, where its share in total sales is 28.3 percent, the average for Western Europe is 12.8 percent.

"In Poland, the share of Internet sales will probably exceed 10 percent this year," Dorota Lachowska, Head of Market Research at Polish Properties. predicts. 

In 2020, its share ranged from 5.6 percent in the pre-pandemic months to over 11 percent in the months of hard cuts (11.9 percent in April and 11.4 percent in November).

As the latest publication of Polish Properties explains, online sales in Poland will continue to grow, not only due to the pandemic that forced customers to buy online, but also thanks to the large number of households connected to the Internet (in 2020 it was 90.4 percent, an increase from 84.2 percent in 2018, GUS). In the last year, we also observed a large increase in the number of card transactions carried out on the Internet, according to the NBP, 38 million such transactions were carried out in the third quarter of 2020, 4.4 million more than in the second quarter.

“The development of e-commerce takes place at the expense of shopping centers, but at the same time has led to an increase in demand for warehouse space. We are currently observing an unprecedented increase in the volume of investment transactions in warehouse facilities, and their rates of return are comparable to the best office buildings in the center of Warsaw,” Dorota Lachowska explains.

In 2020, transactions in warehouse real estate accounted for 50 percent of the total investment volume, while a year ago it was only 21 percent. On the other hand, the percentage share of commercial real estate transactions in the total investment volume decreased to 12 percent (from 54 percent in 2015 and 25 percent in 2019). The value of warehouse real estate transactions in 2020 was therefore over €2.6 billion, 39 percent more than in 2019 and more than ever recorded in the retail sector.

(WBJ)