A tale of two Euros

As Jos Tromp, the director and head of CEE research and consulting at CBRE, points out: "The market has changed quite a bit over the last couple of quarters. We saw it picking up quite considerably in Q2 and Q3, but the trend at the moment is quite ambivalent. For 2011 the CEE investment volume is likely to be the third biggest in history, but after a quarterly average of EUR 2.5 bln in the first three quarters, only about EUR 500 bln was transacted during October and November, which is an indication that the market is now slowing. And this trend looks set to continue into this year." It was in Q3, of course, that a number of eurozone countries were hit by the sovereign debt crises.When it comes to the make-up of investors, the purchase of Europolis' portfolio by CA Immo at the beginning of last year signalled the return of Austrian investors to the CEE region after a slow 2009-2010. Another more active purchaser nation was the US, in the form of US private equity. Blackstone, for exam