In the CEE region, Prague placed second in terms of the price of fitting out an office. With €1,159 being the average cost per square metre in Prague, it is just over half of what is standard in top cities in Germany or the UK, where costs often exceed €2,000. Compared with the last year, the prices have grown all over Europe due to inflation and other factors. The 10% increase in Prague means that office occupiers need to carefully consider their office usage and space needs when redesigning their offices. Sustainability and DE&I are also increasingly affecting fit-out requirements, reports Cushman & Wakefield in their latest analysis.

At the beginning of the pandemic, it seemed that many coworking centres or serviced offices could not survive the measures implemented under the Covid-19 pandemic. Shared workspaces, whose philosophy is based on meeting, personal communication, and collaboration, were hit hard by governmental restrictions. But a December analysis by JLL shows promising results; with the retreat of anti-pandemic measures, most coworking and serviced office operators have already felt a new wave of interest, and 2022 has confirmed this trend.

Bulgarian Real Estate Fund (BREF) officially opened the Synergy Tower business building in Sofia, economy.bg reports. The investment is around €40 million. The first tenants of the building are Robert Bosch Bulgaria, Software AG, and INSAIT (Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology).

The first building of the Nowa Strzegomska complex in Wrocław has received the BREEAM certificate with an Excellent rating. The redevelopment of Wrocław Business Park in Strzegomska Street will see the existing buildings replaced by five class A office buildings with an area of 10,000-15,000 sqm each. Cushman & Wakefield is the leasing agent for Nowa Strzegomska.

Despite significantly lower prices than in the capital, markets for offices in Brno and Ostrava are struggling with rising vacancies. Other regional markets, however, now offer opportunities for developers, investors or serviced office providers, thanks to the potential of the Hub & Spoke concept. The latter centres around a strategy where companies reduce the size of the main office and then supplement it with smaller spaces in different locations. Alongside that, there is the Flex & Core office space usage concept, which combines a smaller main office with a membership of one or more co-working centres. These options to curb office vacancies are mentioned in a recent survey by Colliers.

The Karimpol Group has received a building permit for the second phase of the Skyliner complex. The 130-metre-high office building will be erected at Daszyńskiego Roundabout in Warsaw‘s Wola district next to the first phase of the Skyliner project. The second phase of the investment project, also designed by the APA Wojciechowski Architekci studio, is scheduled to start in the autumn of this year. The entire complex at 67 Prosta Street will offer 73,000 sqm of leasable space.

Romanian developer One United Properties has sold its stake in the company owning the One Herăstrău Office building to a private investor.

The average office fit-out costs in Romania rose by around 20-30% in 2022 due to a combination of supply chain pressures and higher materials’ costs, which saw companies paying an average of €820 per sqm of office space, according to real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield Echinox. 

More than three-quarters (76%) of Europe’s office buildings are at risk of obsolescence by the end of this decade unless landlords invest in improvements or find alternative uses for it. This is the warning from Cushman & Wakefield in its latest report.

Office leasing volumes in Timișoara amounted to 51,400 sqm during 2022, which was more than half of the total deals closed in regional cities. Iași and Cluj-Napoca were next with volumes of 26,700 sqm and 15,200 sqm, respectively, while in Brașov office leasing covered 5,900 sqm.