According to real estate advisory firm Savills, the investment volume on the Polish commercial property market reached €5.29 billion during 2020. The key driver was the industrial sector, which accounted for half of the total volume, with industrial assets becoming more sought-after than offices or retail properties for the first time in history.

Commercial real estate investment activity tends to peak during the last quarter of each year. According to Savills data, it was, however, the first quarter of 2020, when the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic were only starting to permeate across Europe, that posted the highest investment volume last year at approximately €1.7 billion. The fourth quarter saw just €1.26 billion transact, well below the five-year average for the three months to December and two-and-a-half times lower than the volume recorded in the fourth quarter of 2019, which was a peak year for the Polish commercial property market. Overall, total investment activity in 2020 fell by 32 percent y/y.

“Pandemic-related restrictions have clearly taken their toll on the real estate market. Due to a high level of uncertainty and the wait-and-see strategy adopted by most investors, weaker transaction volumes were inevitable. Unlike in the previous financial crisis in the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Poland entered the pandemic period as a much more mature market. The Polish market saw a record-breaking real estate investment volume in the year preceding the GFC, just as it did in 2019 before the pandemic struck. In 2006, the then remarkable volume, however, was lower than the trading volumes posted in the challenging year 2020. The real estate market slowed considerably due to the pandemic, but by no means did it come to a halt,” Tomasz Buras, CEO, Savills Poland, said.

(WBJ)