In 2018, Echo Investment signed lease agreements for a total office area of nearly 80,000 sqm. This year also seems to be busy - the company plans to start construction of approximately 100,000 sqm of offices including in Warsaw, Wrocław, Łódź and Kraków. Projects with a total area of 150,000 sqm are being prepared.

Last year’s demand for office space on Poland’s markets was 1.5 million sqm. 744,000 sqm of office space was delivered to market while a further 1.6 million sqm is under construction, according to JLL’s report.

Cushman & Wakefield has mapped the office property market in detail and made a chart of the largest owners and the most active developers of office buildings in the main markets of the Czech Republic. At this point, there is 4.23 million sqm of office space in the Czech Republic. CPI Group is the biggest owner with 22 properties taking up 5% of the total area. The three biggest office owners in Prague control about 15% of the entire market. Penta Investments has been the most active developer over the course of the last ten years.

Globalworth Poland has taken further steps to manage its Polish real estate portfolio in-house. Between December and January, the company took on the property management of Lumen and Skylight in Warsaw, West Gate in Wrocław, the A4 Business Park in Katowice and Tryton Business House in Gdańsk. Since the company entered the market, Globalworth has gradually internalized the property management of a series of buildings and now handles directly 250,000 sqm in only about one year, which constitutes almost 60% of its portfolio in Poland.

Bucharest’s central business district developed around Victoriei Square is registering an upward evolution in office activity, with a historic record-high volume in take-up and positive growth in pipeline stock, as showed by the latest office analysis conducted by Activ Property Services.

Hungary’s Horizon Development has been granted a development loan by UniCredit for its ongoing Szervita Square mixed-use development in the centre of Budapest. At the same time, the developer has pre-leased all four office floors (8,500 sqm) of the project to coworking space provider Spaces.

At the end of 2018, Warsaw’s total office stock stood at 5.46 million sqm. Despite last year’s supply gap, which is expected to carry into 2019, new supply totalled 232,700 sqm delivered across 20 office projects, down by 70,000 sqm on the five-year average for 2012–2017. Cushman & Wakefield presented a summary of 2018 on the Warsaw office market.

Tower 1 and Tower 2, the first two office buildings of the Globalworth Campus project in Bucharest, have been awarded BREEAM certificates with a rating of 'Excellent'. The certification recognizes the high standards of sustainability and the healthy working environment of the 57,000 sqm of Class A office space in the complex located in the northern part of the city.

The Budapest office market enjoyed a dynamic year in terms of gross take-up, equating to nearly 535,000 sqm of office space transacted, effectively in line with the record year of 2015 which saw circa 538,000 sqm.

Last year an astonishing 860,000 sqm of office space was leased, with the vacancy rate dropping 8.7%, and new supply totalling 230,000 sqm. Currently, the total under-construction volume stands at 720,000 sqm. JLL summarised the Warsaw office market in 2018.