Property investment market keeping pace: Avison Young

Third quarter of 2020 ended with €3.9 billion transacted since the beginning of the year. The result is slightly lower than in the years 2018 and 2019, however it is worth noting that despite the investors’ “wait and see” strategy at the beginning of Covid-19 pandemic, the outcome is still impressive. As many investors are returning to transactions which were put aside, multiple deals should be closed within the last quarter of the year. It has always been a period of intense activity on the market.

Third quarter saw the continuation of investors’ activity in the retail sector with a strong focus on convenience schemes. The volume of retail transactions increased three times in comparison to the second quarter (excluding acquisition of majority stake in GTC in Q2 2020, which also included two shopping centers). Five out of eight retail transactions concluded in Q3 2020 regarded convenience retail. The largest transaction since the start of the pandemic was the sale of five assets (“Tyrion Portfolio”) by Atrium European Real Estate to Metropol Group.

Once again it was the industrial sector which attracted investors’ interest the most. The volume of €1.9 billion realized in three quarters of this year already outperformed total industrial volume from year 2019 (€1.5 billion). The disposal of Goodman portfolio to GLP was finalized in the third quarter, which confirms a significant interest of investors in takeovers of whole companies and platform acquisitions, already observed in previous quarters.

The volume of €230 million in the third quarter of 2020 in the office market was lower than in the previous quarters of this year, and the total volume in this sector after nine months amounted to €1.6 billion.  There are still a few large transactions ongoing and some of them will be probably successfully closed still in 2020. Some of them might be postponed to next year. As a result, it will be difficult to reach office investment volume comparable to last year’s. Four out of five transactions were done in Warsaw, which confirms investors’ interest in stable, core markets. 

(WBJ)