In 2016, total office stock in Poland’s eight key regional cities (Krakow, Wrocław, Tricity, Katowice, Poznań, Łódź, Szczecin and Lublin) rose to nearly 4 million sqm. Krakow, Wrocław and Tricity remain the largest regional office hubs. Office take-up hit nearly 590,000 sqm, which represented a 50% rise on the average for the years 2011–2015. Cushman & Wakefield presented an overview of the Polish regional office market for 2016 in its latest report.

Savills has been appointed by Echo Investment to manage an 16,000 sqm office building, Nobilis Business House in Wrocław. The company has also been appointed to manage the 16-storey, mixed-use Wratislavia Tower on behalf of Cinema Tower Sp. z o.o. The 20,000 sqm property officially joined Savills portfolio in December 2016.

In 2016, office supply in Warsaw rose by 65% on the annual average for the period 2011–2015. The largest number of new office buildings was delivered in the City Core and the Fringe. Take-up came predominantly from the business services sector. Cushman & Wakefield presented an overview of the Warsaw office market in 2016 in its latest report.

Search engines have become an integrated part of the daily life of people and companies as well. Not only the process of buying a book or planning a vacation has changed drastically over the last decade but companies looking for office space are also turning to the Internet more often. The latest Tea & Talk session, co-organised by RICS Hungary and VLK Cresa in Budapest, helped us understand how changes in technology will affect brokers, tenants and landlords.

In 2016, the Warsaw office market grew by 407,000 sqm of new space in 21 projects. The vacancy rate has grown by 1.9 pp on a yearly basis to 14.2 of total stock with central locations having lower occupancy rates than non-central locations. The Polish Office Research Forum has published its data on the Warsaw office market for Q4 2016. 

The property management and (property and SPV) accounting of Váci Greens’ Building C, acquired by ZFP Investments, acting on behalf of the ZFP realitní fond, a Czech real estate fund entering the Hungarian commercial real estate market, is now performed by CBRE.

Cushman & Wakefield has been responsible for the audit of the Sienna Center office complex and obtaining a BREEAM IN-USE International 2015 certificate for the scheme. The office complex received a “Very Good” rating in Asset Performance and an “Excellent” rating in Building Management. The scheme is owned by CA Immo.

Nearly 100,000 sqm of new office space was delivered to the Budapest market in 2016, the highest figure since 2010. Meanwhile, demand picked up in the last quarter of the year with a large share of the total leasing volume made up of pre-leases and new transactions. At the same time, the office vacancy rate has returned to its downward trajectory, reaching 9.5%, the lowest rate on record.

Skanska invests €38 million in the first phase of Campus 6, an office complex in Bucharest, Romania. The first phase will offer a total leasable area of about 22,000 square meters on 11 stories above ground and two levels of underground parking.

EPAM, an international company which is involved in the development of software and implementation of IT projects, has leased an office area of nearly 3,500 sqm in O3 Business Campus which is being developed by Echo Investment in Kraków. CBRE advised EPAM in the leasing process.