According to Experts.news, residential real estate and institutional leasing became one of the fastest-growing segments of the Central and Eastern European investment market in the first half of 2026.
The residential/living segment accounted for 19% of investments in commercial real estate in the CEE-6, compared to just 7% a year earlier, according to Colliers data.
Thus, its share nearly tripled in less than a year and approached the levels of the traditionally largest real estate classes—offices and retail properties.
One of the most telling examples was Poland, where the largest transaction in the history of the local PRS (institutional rental housing) market took place in the first half of the year.
Vantage Development acquired 18 completed Resi4Rent projects for 575 million euros. The portfolio includes 5,322 apartments in Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław, Gdańsk, Łódź, and Poznań.
This transaction reflects growing interest among large investors in residential properties intended not for the resale of individual apartments, but for long-term professional leasing of entire portfolios.
This model is widespread in Western Europe, but in Central and Eastern Europe, the institutional rental market is much younger and has more room for growth.
Interest in the segment is driven by urbanization, high housing purchase costs, labor mobility, and growing demand for professionally managed rental housing in the region’s largest cities.
According to Colliers, with total investment in the CEE-6 region amounting to 5.8 billion euros, the market is gradually becoming more diversified, and residential/living has already become one of the top four investment sectors.
The Romanian commercial real estate market attracted approximately 300 million euros in investment in the first half of 2026, compared to about 400 million euros during the same period last year, according to the Colliers CEE Investment Scene H1 2026 report.
Romania accounted for 5.4% of total CEE-6 investment volume, despite the fact that the country accounts for about 18% of the aggregate GDP of the six economies under review. According to Colliers, this indicates significant potential for further growth in the Romanian investment market.
Offices accounted for about 60% of Romania’s investment volume in the first half of the year, marking the highest share for this segment since 2022.
However, the market structure may shift in the second half of the year due to large transactions in retail and other real estate sectors.
Romania continues to offer higher yields than many more mature markets in Central Europe. In Bucharest, the prime yield stands at about 7.5% for offices, 7.75% for industrial and logistics properties, and 7.25% for shopping centers.
By comparison, yields on high-quality properties in Warsaw, Prague, and other more liquid capitals in the region are at lower levels.
Colliers notes that the decline in transaction volume in the first half of the year does not necessarily indicate a deterioration in the market’s fundamentals. A number of large transactions were in the final stages of completion after the end of June.
In particular, the sale of the MAS retail real estate portfolio to AFI Europe was completed in the third quarter. If the deals currently in progress are finalized, Romania’s total investment volume for 2026 could approach 1 billion euros.
This would be only the second year since 2007 that the Romanian market has reached this level, notes Robert Miklo, Head of Capital Markets at Colliers Romania.
Colliers operates in more than 70 countries, employs approximately 28,000 professionals, and has roughly $110 billion in assets under management.
Investments in commercial real estate across the six largest markets of Central and Eastern Europe reached EUR5.8 billion in the first half of 2026, increasing by approximately 7% compared with the same period last year, according to the Colliers CEE Investment Scene H1 2026 report.
The study covers Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Bulgaria. The investment volume was above the average for the first halves of the past five years, which amounted to EUR4.6 billion, and above the ten-year average level of EUR5.1 billion.
Poland became the largest market, where the volume of transactions exceeded EUR3 billion. It accounted for around 52% of all CEE-6 investments. The Czech Republic ranked second with more than EUR1.4 billion, while Hungary attracted almost EUR600 million, showing the best first-half result since 2021.
According to Colliers, the market recovery differs from previous investment cycles. Capital is returning selectively, with investors giving preference to properties with stable income, good locations, high energy efficiency and long-term demand from tenants.
Offices became the largest segment, followed by retail real estate, residential properties and institutional rental, as well as industrial and logistics real estate.
Colliers forecasts that by the end of 2026, the volume of investments in CEE-6 commercial real estate may reach EUR12.5-13 billion, compared with EUR11.6 billion in 2025, and approach the peak levels observed before the pandemic.
Among the main risks for the market, experts cite high interest rates, rising refinancing costs, geopolitical tensions, weakness in German industry and energy costs. At the same time, additional investment opportunities are being created by infrastructure projects, the defense industry, the energy transition, artificial intelligence, reindustrialization and the relocation of production closer to European consumers.
Colliers is a global professional services and investment management company operating in more than 70 countries. Its annual revenue amounts to around $6 billion, its workforce totals around 28,000 people, and assets under management amount to approximately $110 billion.
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Real estate investment fund Inzhur intends to cooperate with the international company Colliers to renovate Zhytniy Market in Kyiv.
“Inzhur is ready to turn the neglected Zhytniy Market into a world-class destination. We have held successful negotiations with the specialists of the international company Colliers. They are ready to create a concept for the renovation of Zhytniy Market,” Inzhur’s Telegram channel reports.
According to the report, Colliers’ work will be financed by the fund. Inzhur expects to buy the Zhytniy Market building and turn it into a gastronomic market with street food and a seating area, similar to the TimeOut Market in Lisbon.
As reported, on March 18, the Kyiv City State Administration’s Department of Communal Property announced a tender for the lease of Zhytniy Market. The auction is scheduled for March 25. The starting price is UAH 2.4 million per month. Later, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced plans to announce a new auction and extend the deadline for submitting applications.
For its part, the Inzhur investment fund insists on announcing a privatization auction instead of a lease auction to buy the building from municipal ownership.
Inzhur REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust), the first Ukrainian service for the joint purchase of real estate, was launched in early 2022. The service offers a number of real estate properties leased for 10-25 years to the Ukrainian supermarket chain Silpo and the international fast food chain McDonald’s.
The founder and investor of Inzhur is Andriy Zhurzhii, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Zhurzhii Ventures Investment Fund. The fund owns Smile Development, a development company that has built and sold more than 35 Silpo and Fora supermarkets to investors, and is developing the Optimisto residential complex in Gatne near Kyiv, and Investment Partners, an asset management company that manages UAH 45 billion in assets in Ukraine and the European Union.
Stolitsa Group investment and developing company, which is part of Lithuania’s BT Invest, jointly with Colliers International (Ukraine) has finished the restyling of the food court and restaurant zone in the Retroville shopping and entertainment center located at 47, Pravdy Avenue in Kyiv. The mall will be opened in 2019. “Together with colleagues, we have analyzed the shopping and entertainment centers in Kyiv, including the mistakes made by developers in the planning of food court zones and the location of restaurants. With extensive experience in the development and management of the shopping and entertainment centers in the Baltic states and Kazakhstan, we tried to implement the best ideas and carried out a complete renovation of the project catering zone at the Retroville shopping mall. This process included an increase in the number of operators representing a variety of cuisines, as well as an increase in the sitting area of the food court to 1,800 square meters, which today is the largest sitting zone among shopping centers of Kyiv,” Colliers International said in a press release, citing the Retroville director general.
According to the report, the sitting zone will be located on the second floor along the glass facade of the center.
According to Natalia Kravets, Director of the commercial real estate department at Colliers International (Ukraine), the tender to select operators has already been launched and anchor tenants have been identified both in the area of the food court (about 15 operators, including McDonald’s) and in the restaurant zone.
Colliers International earlier reported that the opening of the Retroville shopping center with a gross area of 118,900 square meters with an eleven-story class B business center in Kyiv was postponed from August 2018 to early 2019.
