HB Reavis has secured a €162 million loan from a consortium of four banks – Santander Bank Polska, Bank Pekao S.A., PKO Bank Polski S.A. and BNP Paribas Bank Polska S.A. – for the construction of its 78,000 sqm Forrest office campus in Warsaw.  

Office take-up in Prague has been slowly decreasing since 2017, cooling down further last year. Companies relocate or expand less often and increasingly more of them prefer to stay in their current location. Compared with earlier years, the share of major transactions in excess of 3,000 sqm was lower last year. The situation is not dramatic, however, as area absorption remains relatively high. This development can affect rents, though – their current amount will become untenable. By contrast, Brno saw a record-breaking increase in take-up and a strong share of major transactions last year, with rent amounts increasing as well, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s report.

Kraków has nearly doubled its office stock over the last four years, becoming the largest and fastest-growing regional city office market in Poland, according to a new report by Savills.

Flow East has pre-leased 75% of its mixed-use project being constructed on Wenceslas Square (Václavské náměstí), with just 5,000 square metres of office space left available at The Flow Building five months ahead of its completion.

Although there has been a slight decline in total office demand, CBRE leased 1 million square meters of office space last year in the CEE region. For Romania’s office market, 2019 was a prolific year, with the modern stock surpassing 3 million sqm and, finally, with a reversal of classes composition: Class A became the preponderance with 53% of the total. As the main market of the country, Bucharest faced a strong demand, approximatively 386,000 sqm being leased in 2019 – an impressive 19% growth compared with 2018

Savills has been appointed as sole letting agent for office space in the three buildings of Business Garden Wrocław, owned by the ISOC Group. Savills has also been the property manager for the first phase of the project since mid-2019.

According to the latest “Occupier Economics” report prepared by Cresa Poland, gross take-up hit an all-time high in the Warsaw office market in 2019. Leasing volume came to almost 880,000 sqm, up by nearly 42,000 sqm on the previous peak year 2015. The market reported an approximately 7% increase in total office take-up in the four quarters of 2019 compared to the annual average for 2015-2019.

The total stock of coworking and flexible office space in Prague reached 75,000 sqm by the end of 2019, as eight new centres opened their doors to take the total number to 59, according to the latest Savills research. Similar growth of the flexible office space sector is expected in 2020, which would take the total stock to almost 100,000 sqm.

In H2 2019, gross take-up on the Brno office market reached 54,600 sqm (up by 303% y-o-y), whereas in Ostrava gross take-up reached 4,100 sqm, representing a y-o-y decrease of 41%. The Regional Research forum announced the Brno and Ostrava office market figures for H2 2019.

Last year saw excellent results in the office sector in Poland. Demand was a record breaking 1.6 million sqm. Total stock exceeded 11 million sqm with regional markets accounting for 5.6 million sqm and outperforming Warsaw for the first time. JLL summarised the situation on the Polish office market at the end of 2019.