US giant BlackRock is exiting the Polish real estate market. Having offloaded its key office investment in the country, Warsaw’s flagship Rondo 1 tower, in 2014 for roughly €300m, the investor confirmed it’s closing its Warsaw office in May. “In line with current strategy and due to the current property market fundamentals, the business does not view Poland as a core investment market for deploying capital over the short term and as a result will close our office effective 31st May 2016,” Roland Leithäuser, vice president of BlackRock Corporate Communications for the EMEA region told CIJ, adding that the decision does not affect any other offices in the region or the company’s retail mutual funds business. “As with other non-core markets, we will continue to monitor the Polish market using our resources within Europe,” he added.
“We’ve been observing some outflow from some American capital around Europe at the moment, so I don’t see any regularity for the Polish market, determined by economical, or political factors, especially since the investor hasn’t been active here in Poland for some time,” said Maciej Wójcikiewicz, senior director at CBRE in Poland.
This is evident when looking at other key players on the Polish market, such as Deka or Invesco, who have recently expanded their portfolios within the country. “On the top of this we see a fresh batch of players are currently targeting Europe,” Wójcikiewicz said. “At this stage, they’re also quite cautious, looking for best projects and acting mostly through local funds.”
