Implementing transparency in an Eastern European office market: preparing Warsaw for global investments

Abstract

In the aftermath of an increasing integration of property and financial markets, the real estate industry is subject to soaring internationalization processes. Since international institutional investors appeared, transnational real estate investments have increased tremendously. In recent years, Central and Eastern European countries have been becoming more attractive to institutional investors and are therefore being integrated into international market structures. Within these countries, Warsaw emerged as the most dynamic and important real estate market. But what are the mechanisms and practices through which the real estate market of Warsaw becomes international? Which networks, intermediaries and frames are necessary to constitute a mature real estate market? The article argues that international real estate consultants are playing a crucial role in the underlying internationalization process. They are acting at the interface between investors, developers, construction companies and tenants and are therefore becoming a crucial hinge between real estate actors. With the example of the Warsaw real estate market we argue that international real estate consultancies are key drivers of the transformation process from a local to a global market. They transfer global knowledge, competence and practices and implement transparent and professional structures in the emerging Warsaw real estate market

Cuban migrants and the making of Havana’s property market

“…Current trends in the Cuban housing economy offer a unique opportunity to study actually existing "market making" processes and practices in a socialist context where private homeownership was historically predominant, but with restrictions for buying, selling, and investing (Grein, 2015). Our findings therefore also dialogue with the literatures on "market making" and "marketization" in general (Boeckler & Berndt, 2012;Corpataux & Crevoisier, 2016;French et al, 2011;Hall, 2010), on real estate in particular (Hofman & Aalbers, 2019;Searle, 2014;Waldron, 2018;Wijburg & Aalbers, 2017), and on situations of emerging market socialism or (post-)socialism more specifically (Bitterer & Heeg, 2012;Bohle, 2014;Büdenbender & Aalbers, 2019;Büdenbender & Golubchikov, 2017). Our findings also sharpen existing debates on financial globalization, uneven development, and dependency theory in an increasingly connected "world of cities" (Brenner & Schmid, 2014;Robinson, 2016).…”

Complexity and coordination in London’s Silvertown Quays: How real estate developers (re)centred themselves in the planning process

“…While I do not operationalize the concept of financialization here, recent debates on this dimension of urban development (see Aalbers, 2017;Halbert and Attuyer, 2016) have afforded greater attention to developers' strategies. In particular, they show how developers translate qualitative data into financial data to show specific returns (Bitterer and Heeg 2012;Halbert and Sanfelici, 2016;Theurillat and Crevoisier, 2013), shape calculative logics (David and Halbert, 2014) and help international actors filter away the noise or problems associated with highly localized development (Rouanet and Halbert, 2016;Searle, 2014). At the same time, developers are required to engage with occupier needs and address these in project design (Fainstein, 2001;Guironnet et al, 2016;Theurillat and Crevoisier, 2013).…”

The internationalization of commercial real estate markets in France and Germany

“…This can also be explained by the fact that international institutional investors had not yet entered the German investment market, which allowed the status quo to be maintained (Kofner, 2012;Wijburg and Aalbers, 2017). Simultaneously, German open-ended funds started buying foreign real estate properties, in particular in the Greater Paris region and Eastern Europe (Bitterer and Heeg, 2012;Nappi-Choulet, 2013).…”