The seven billion euro question

It was obvious as early as last summer that the investment record set in 2006 was in serious danger of being eclipsed. The forecasts then were for a volume of around EUR 5.5 bln, but by the autumn it was already clear that even EUR 6 bln was achievable. The final figure, EUR 7.2 bln, however, still came as something of a surprise. In spite of this huge volume, some are anticipating that even this could be surpassed in 2019. “Last year broke all the records and this won’t be an easy feat to repeat,” admits Tomasz Buras, the managing director of Savills in Poland. “Strong investor activity has continued into the first few weeks of 2019. Many market players, however, have been worried that a cycle of increasing interest rates might be on the cards. But this is not the case at the moment and you can see the opposite trend in such countries as Belgium and Germany, where interest rates were actually lowered at the end of 2018 and early 2019. We are also seeing a great