Bryan Wilson, co-founder of the independent law office Wilsons, led the investment panel at CEDEM 2019 held in Slovansky dům in central Prague on Sept. 25. The discussion took place in the context of an increasingly unpredictable economic environment as the weight of uncertainties over a combination of Brexit, and the trade war between the United State and China is depressing manufacturing and capital investments. Remarkably, however, real estate transactions in Central Europe has remained at near record levels, with variations from year to year in the individual nations. In fact, Brexit was the first topic Wilson quizzed the panelists on to ask if the U.K.’s seemingly inevitable break with the European Union would hit transaction volumes. The consensus was just the opposite: that investors were “running away” from the U.K. and that capital was concentrating on Europe, with Central Europe providing better value at the moment than Western Europe.
Wilson noted that volumes in CEE were indeed strong, but worried that this could be short-lived. “I see that transaction volume is steeply tailing off,” he said. “There will be some hang over for the second half of this year for deals that started earlier but the volume of transactions is definitely decreasing. I think there’s a lack of product. Still, there’s a great deal of demand not only from international but from domestic investors and finance seems to be relatively easy to obtain for decent product.” The panelists on Wilsons’ panel were Mike Atwell, Head of Capital Markets CEE at JLL, Róbert Sninčák, Head of Asset Management for CEE at CBRE Global Investors and Roland Bebčák, Partner at White Star Real Estate.
