Tag Archives: czech
Research reveals the housing market winners to mark first games of Euro football cup
With the European Championship football tournament underway new research shows which countries have done best in terms of house prices since the last cup four years ago. The price of mainstream homes have increases in more than 74% of the countries competing in the tournament, according to the study from international real estate agent Knight Frank. Turkey topped the rankings with an increase of 65.6%, followed by the Republic of Ireland with price growth of 34.3% and Sweden up 32%. In fourth place is Iceland with house prices up by 30.6%, followed closely by England where prices are up 29.7%, Germany up 19.7%, Austria up 16.5%, Northern Ireland up by 15.6% and Russia up 15.2%. Next is Wales with price growth of 14.1% in the last four years, Switzerland up 10.3%, the Czech Republic up 8.2%, Hungary up 8.1%, Belgium up 4%, Poland up by 1.8%, Portugal up by 1.4% and Slovakia up by 0.9%. The country with the worst ranking is Ukraine where house prices have fallen by 22.6% but this is not surprising considering the unrest in recent years. Second from bottom is Italy where prices are down 13.1% and then Croatia where prices have fallen by 9% since the last tournament in 2012. In Romania prices are down 0.5%, France down 5.7%, Spain down 7.2%. Kate Everett-Allen, head of international residential research at Knight Frank, pointed out that the divergent performance of northern and southern Europe is evident. ‘The Nordic countries along with Ireland, England and Germany have seen prices accelerate while prices in most of the southern European economies still sit below their level in 2012,’ she said. Continue reading
Investment in European commercial property up 18% year on year in Q3
The level of investment into European commercial real estate continues to grow with €62 billion invested in the third quarter of 2015, up 18% on the same period in 2014. France experienced the most noteworthy increase with investment activity of over €7 billion, almost double that of the same quarter in 2014, according to figures from CBRE. French investment activity was dominated by domestic investors who accounted for more than 70% of CRE investment in the third quarter, and who typically favoured large offices located in the Paris CBD. Whilst France benefitted from the biggest change in investor sentiment, it was Germany which saw the greatest increase in absolute terms, with quarter three investment of €14 billion, up €5.6 billion on the same quarter last year. The report points out that the €36 billion already invested in German commercial real estate in the first three quarters of this year is 40% higher than the equivalent period in 2014. Alongside France and Germany, several other countries experienced a strong third quarter. Norway and Sweden saw investment volumes grow by 139% and 68% respectively on the third quarter of 2014. Southern Europe also performed well, with Portugal and Italy benefitting from a slight shift in investor focus away from the Spanish market. Belgium attracted near record levels of investment in the third quarter, boosted by several large retail transactions. In Central and Eastern Europe, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary saw the most investment activity. At a city level, the most notable aspect was the move of the Nordics up the table of Europe’s largest CRE investment markets with Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm making the top 10. Typically these Nordic capitals have very high levels of domestic investment, around 70%, with cross-border European investment accounting for around 25% and just 5% of capital coming from outside of Europe. However in the third quarter foreign investment accounted for more than half the total in both Oslo and Copenhagen. London and Paris continue to fill the top two spots in the league table, but interestingly all five of the main German markets make it into the quarter’s top ten for the first time since the first quarter of 2013. ‘We have seen good growth across the European commercial real estate investment market in the last quarter. With high levels of transactions expected in the fourth quarter, this current trend is set to continue and we believe we will see a strong year end in terms of investment volumes,’ said Jonathan Hull, managing director, EMEA Capital Markets at CBRE. ‘Retail recorded the strongest levels of investment growth this quarter up 45% on the third quarter of 2014, the second highest level we have seen in 10 years of data. The office sector also performed well across the region, underscored by some significant transactions in France, the UK, Norway… Continue reading
Artificial Areas Cover Only 5% Of EU – Survey
Eurostat data | Friday 25 October 2013 Artificial areas, such as buildings, roads and rail networks, covered only 5% of the total surface area of the EU in 2012. Forests and other wooded land occupied around 40%, farmland one fourth and grassland one fifth. These figures, published by Eurostat on 25 October, are the findings of a large-scale land survey, the ‘Land use/cover area frame survey’ (LUCAS), conducted most recently in 2012. LUCAS is the largest harmonised land survey ever implemented in the EU. Photographs can be found in the statistical atlas on the Eurostat site (1). More than half of Sweden (76% of total land area), Finland (72%), Estonia (61%), Slovenia (60%) and Latvia (56%) is covered by forests. The highest shares of cropland are observed in Denmark (49%), Hungary (47%), Romania (36%), the Czech Republic and Poland (both 34%), Germany (33%), Bulgaria and Italy (both 32%) and France (31%). More than two thirds (67%) of Ireland is covered by natural or agricultural grasslands, followed by the United Kingdom (40%), the Netherlands (38%), Luxembourg (37%) and Belgium (32% Finland (16%), Sweden (12%) and the Netherlands (11%) have the largest proportions of water areas. A third of Malta is covered with built-up and other artificial areas, followed by Belgium (13%), Luxembourg and the Netherlands (both 12%). Continue reading
