Investments in retail and warehouse sector by Tomasz Buras, Savills Polska

"The consensus on the market is that the warehouse market will be driven on to further heights by e-commerce over the next few years. This means it will be dominant development trend – one that the warehouse developers active on our market (Panattoni, Prologis, Goodman, Segro, and the others) are certain to follow. The competition is already fierce, but it will remain strong and will not change. And this is good for the market. We will have more warehouse projects to be sold and this will certainly be a boon for those agents who are active in the investment market. This class of asset will provide them with new opportunities, although this was not so obvious in Q1. The warehouse volume was the sector with the third highest volume, below EUR 150 mln. By the end of the year, more opportunities should arise on the market. The warehouse market is at a very good moment and is generating very promising situations for developers, tenants and funds," Tomasz Buras commented on the warehouse market.

"The retail market, apart from what has been said about leasing issues, the challenge of e-commerce, the changes in the visions for shops and the future role of shopping centres, the investment market in this sector is still attracting substantial interest. Dominant and large scale shopping centres are being targeted by investors. When it comes to the leasing issues, the commercialisation processes for several large shopping centre are ongoing at the moment. These include GTC’s mall in Białołęka in Warsaw, the master management project and initial project of Jupiter, we are all waiting for Posnania in Poznań, and Rodamco’s project in Wrocław. These are projects that are in advanced or even the final stages of leasing. And we will monitor the resulting changes in the cities when these projects are opened," told us managing director of Savills Polska.