Investment in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) commercial property totalled €8.7bn at the end of November 2011, twice the level registered in the same period of 2010, according to CBRE.

If all the deals in the pipeline are completed by the year-end, then 2011 could rank as the CEE’s third strongest year in history for investment turnover as it is likely to overtake 2008 when €9.5 bn was recorded. Although it is significantly below the peak set in 2007 of €14.6bn.

Jos Tromp, head of CEE research & consultancy, CBRE, said: “Despite the volatile market sentiment in recent years, CEE has managed to attract a significant amount of capital to be invested in real estate.

“On the one hand this is to be explained by value-add and opportunistic money flowing to Russia. On the other hand, Poland and the Czech Republic, in particular, are continuing to attract risk-averse investments.”

Despite strong performance in Q1-3 2011, the result for October and November is not looking as strong with the total amount in Q4 2011 only €550m. This is currently significantly below the quarterly average measured during Q1-Q3 of at least €2.5bn per quarter.

Patrick O’Gorman, director of CEE capital markets at CBRE, said: “A new wave of uncertainty has started to significantly impact the availability of financing. Since CEE is still strongly dependent on Western European banks, this is likely to restrict deal flow into 2012. The direct impact is that transactions take longer to complete or collapse.

“With many investors struggling to negotiate bank finance, equity investors are now seeing less competition for conservative prime investments in most markets. Based on their risk/return-profiles it is likely that these investors will continue to focus their attention largely on prime assets in Poland and Czech Republic.”