Polish real estate: inflation, REITs, Warsaw and remote work.

Drukker has run commercial real estate in Warsaw for almost three decades. The episode is a primer on where Polish CRE sits at the end of a brutal European cycle: investment volumes across the continent are down 80 to 90 percent peak-to-trough, La Défense alone has roughly a million square metres of office stock its owners would now rather demolish than re-lease, and the post-pandemic rebalancing of office demand is far from finished.

Two threads stood out. First, the war in Ukraine effectively added 10 percent to Poland's population overnight, which doubled apartment prices in central Warsaw within two years (12,000 PLN per square metre to 18,000 or 20,000, penthouses clearing at 30,000). The implications for both housing affordability and investment yields are still being absorbed. Second, ESG as currently implemented is losing ground to older certification regimes (BREEAM, LEED) and to a newer American "WiredScore" that grades buildings on data and fibre connectivity. The selling point for institutional buyers is increasingly the technical fit, not the green label.

A grounded episode for anyone underwriting Polish or Central European property from outside the region. The market is recovering, cautiously, and the next two years will reward operators who can read both the demographic and the infrastructural signals at once.