Cushman & Wakefield has published a summary of the first half of 2018 on the Warsaw office market in its latest MarketBeat report. Effects of the existing supply gap are likely to carry into 2020 when large-scale office projects providing a cumulative annual supply of 430,000 sqm will be delivered. As a result, tenants are increasingly opting for pre-lets to secure prime office locations.

WeWork, flexible workspace provider, has become the sole tenant of office space in the Western Building of the Mennica Legacy Tower, a modern office complex being built by Golub GetHouse and Mennica Polska S.A. at the junction of Prosta and Żelazna streets in Warsaw.

Cushman & Wakefield has been appointed on an exclusive basis to sell the Zepter Business Center, an office building at ul. Domaniewskia 37 in Warsaw.

Skanska has acquired the 61-meter Waterworks office building in Budapest. The developer is demolishing the 26,000 sqm office building which dates from 1981. Later on, Skanska plans to develop a modern, visionary office complex in the same location.

The boom continues. At the end of H1 2018, supply on Poland’s office markets exceeded 10 million sqm. Furthermore, 1.8 million sqm remains under construction, with 1.1 million sqm being developed outside Warsaw. JLL summarised the situation on the Polish office market in H1 2018.

Real estate developers pay special attention to the environment by developing efficient and sustainable, green certified projects. With a history of almost four years, the WELL Building Standard complements these certifications and shifts the attention from the built environment to the health of the employees. In Romania, this phenomenon is in its inception and Colliers International Romania is the first real estate consultancy company with a team of WELL professionals – two out of the five that are present on a national level.

The share of vacant office space on Prague’s office market increased to 6.9% at the end of Q2 2018, which is in 0.7 percentage points higher than in the previous quarter. Prime headline rents in the city centre also slightly increase. The Prague Research Forum announced the office market figures for Q1 2018.

BNP Paribas Real Estate Poland represented First Property in the successful acquisition of Krakow Business Park (KBP).

Leasing activity in the Budapest office market remained strong with more than 253,000 sqm of office space leased in the first half of 2018. In total, commercial real estate agencies were involved in 173,000 sqm of office leasing transactions, from which CBRE completed the largest amount of transactions, 42,245 sqm equating to 24.4% market share in the agents market.

Last June, Cushman & Wakefield was appointed as an exclusive commercialisation agent for building “B” of the LIXA office complex being developed by Yareal in Warsaw’s Wola district. The first phase of the development project (buildings A and B) comprising 27,900 sqm of leasable space is expected to be delivered to the market in Q3 2020.