Poland’s rise to prominence

From the perspective of a company in the financial sector, how would you assess the current state of the Polish commercial real estate market? How does it differ from those in the West – especially, in your experience, Germany? Dieter V. Knittel, the managing director and CEE head of Deutsche Pfandbriefbank AG: The commercial real estate market in Poland started to pick up earlier than some of the other European markets, primarily due to its historically higher yields, which allowed a faster alignment of price expectations. A number of new green buildings across Poland now fulfil important ESG requirements. And so, the CEE region performs better than some other European markets in terms of notable transactions in the office and retail sectors. We like Poland very much, as it’s the dominant CEE market, and we plan to carry out several new transactions here this year. What has changed the most over the last 25–30 years? Poland has become a more mature market