James Chapman, Cushman & Wakefield: The second quarter of this year was phenomenal

“It is interesting that we have again seen the office sector take the majority of the transaction volume, with close to 50 pct of all activity across the region, but the underlying trends still show a very strong performance in the industrial sector, which continues to outperform its ten-year average in terms of the percentage of the overall market. We anticipate that the sector will peak by the end of 2014. There is still a significant appetite for industrial product across the region, with some big deals expected before the end of the year – and that will be a feature of the second half of the year.” “It is no great surprise to see Poland and the Czech Republic continuing to be considered as core European markets. In actual fact, I think that a number of the new capital sources coming in see good value in the Czech Republic and Poland when compared to other established core European markets, but the interesting trend I think across the wider region is that you are seeing investors now being priced out of Czech and Poland and looking at Hungary, Slovakia and further afield to Romania and the Balkans. But this is also a trend that is having effect on the Polish market and to some extent on the Czech market, because they are opening up to regional cities as well. So whereas in 2013 we were talking very much about the top five cities of Poland and when it came to Czech Republic perhaps really only the capital Prague, now we are certainly talking about the top 25 cities and maybe we are set to go even further than that when you are look]at the investor demand in terms of yields that they can see those cities.”