Cushman & Wakefield have newly become the manager of two Class A office buildings: Keystone in Prague 8 and Smíchov Gate in Prague 5. Both properties are situated in locations popular on the office market where lease volumes have been the highest this year. Prague 5 accounted for 16% of the total volume and Prague 8 for 15%.

Kraków is the biggest office market in Poland outside of Warsaw. In August 2017 Kraków surpassed the threshold of 1 million sqm of overall supply. As for H2 2017, JLL expects that the volume of new office space will total 105,000 sqm, which would constitute the second best result in Poland with Warsaw claiming the top position

HB Reavis’ flagship development in Warsaw’s city centre, Varso, has been awarded a WELL Core & Shell Precertification by the International WELL Building Institute. Through the introduction of solutions aimed at improving employee wellbeing at the building design stage, Varso is WELL Core & Shell Precertified at the Gold level, and could be awarded WELL Core & Shell Certification following final performance verification upon completion in 2020.

Skanska invests €27 million in the office project Praga Studios in Prague. The seven-floor building will offer a total leasable area of about 12,000 square meters. Construction has begun and the office building is scheduled for completion in Q2 2019.

Real estate developer Portland Trust and American investment fund Ares Management LP will invest €50 million in the development of the third building at Oregon Park in the northern part of Bucharest. The new office building will comprise25,000 sqm and should be completed by the end of 2018.

The significant increase in interest from international investors looking for the best formats of cooperation with local developers sends a powerful message to the market in Romania’s capital city. Importantly, the abovementioned interest applies not only to the office sector, but also to the retail and logistics ones.

Demand in the Tri-City continued apace. 73,800 sqm had been leased in the area in H1 2017. The vacancy rate currently stands at 7.8%. JLL summarised H1 2017 on the office market in the Tri-City.

In H1 2017, the Wrocław office market recorded demand totalling nearly 92,000 sqm, mostly as a consequence of the high level of activity among tenants from the business services sector. JLL summarised the first half of 2017 on Wrocław's office market.

The Nowy Świat 2.0 office building in Warsaw has been recognized with an LEED Gold ecological certificate. Experts from JLL supported investor Centrum Bankowo-Finansowe “Nowy Świat” S.A. in obtaining the certificate.

Free office space is dwindling in the Czech Republic. The office vacancy rate in Brno, as well as in Prague, has slipped below 10%. Both cities experience the lowest rate of vacant offices in the last decade. Brno recorded a sharp decline by 2.4 percentage points in H1 2017, while in the capital demand totalled 153,500 sqm in Q2 2017, up 45% on the previous quarter and 36.9% year-on-year. Overall, more than 370 deals were closed in Prague in H1 2017, many of which were pre-leases. In contrast, in Brno there was an 8% drop in lettings compared to H2 2016.