Half of the employees who normally work in office buildings continued to work mainly from home even after the state of emergency was lifted, despite the fact that, during the summer, most companies began to bring back their employees partially or through rotation in the office spaces, as shown by a research study conducted by Cushman & Wakefield Echinox regarding the working methods of employees in Romania during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Partially due to the pandemic, demand for office space on Poland’s largest regional markets from January to September was 11% lower year-on-year. Many tenants are temporarily postponing expansion plans and relocation decisions, according to JLL’s summary.

Due to the prolonged COVID-19 epidemic, some tenants on the Warsaw office market are postponing relocations, looking for sublessees or downsizing their offices. According to the Cresa Polska report "Occupier Economics: Office market in Warsaw in the third quarter of 2020", office take-up amounted to 113,000 sqm in Q3 2020, which is the weakest quarterly result in the last 10 years. Warsaw’s office stock reached 5.8 million sqm.

The impacts of COVID-19 are becoming visible on Prague’s office market with a rapid decrease of net demand and the postponement of several completions of new office projects. At the same time, the share of sublease deals within the total take-up increased from around 1% in previous quarters to 7%. The Prague Research Forum announced the office market figures for the third quarter of 2020.

GTC has expanded its portfolio of green projects. The Matrix A and Matrix B office buildings in Zagreb have both been granted LEED Platinum certifications. Thus, 80% of all GTC’s office properties now bear an eco-friendly label. 

Demand in Q1-Q3 2020 was 35% lower on Warsaw’s office market than in the corresponding period last year, while another trend is a growing volume of office space available for sublease.  JLL summarised the Warsaw office market at the end of Q3 2020.

Immofinanz has appointed Savills as sole property manager for its portfolio of seven office buildings in Prague, Czech Republic, with effect from January 2021. The total floor area of the assets is approximately 123,000 sqm.

The sixth and last building of the Váci Greens office complex in Budapest, the 23,445 sqm Building “E”, has received the final occupancy permit. With this, Atenor’s flagship project in Budapest is completed.

Reuters reports that Magyar Telekom (Deutsche Telekom’s Hungarian unit), which moved into its newly constructed Budapest HQ in Q3 2018 and signed a 15-year lease agreement for 58,000 sqm, is considering subletting some of its office space.

Budapest’s office vacancy rate has increased to 8.1% in Q3 2020, representing an increase of 2.2 pps year-on-year. 106 lease agreements were concluded during the quarter and the number of signed transactions dropped by 25% compared to the same quarter of 2019, according to BRF’s latest figures.