Prime headline rents in Bucharest continued to increase in the third quarter, reaching a monthly level of €19.5 per sqm, compared with €18.5 per sqm at the beginning of the year. However, the capital city remains among the less expensive destinations in Europe in terms of office occupancy costs. 

According to a report published by Newmark Polska, the vacancy rate held firm in Poland’s regional city office markets throughout the third quarter of this year along with moderate occupier and developer activity. The need to look for savings due to high inflation and rising service charges is set to be a major challenge facing the office market in the coming quarters.

CEE-based flex office operator New Work continues to expand in its key markets. In Budapest, the company opened the second phase of its business centre in the Science Park office building in South Buda, adding 2,000 sqm of high-quality flex office space to the local market. In Warsaw, New Work opened a brand location, offering 1,135 sqm, in the Tulipan House office building in the city’s Służewiec district.

In Q3 2022, some companies in the Prague office market experienced problems with convincing employees to return to the offices. Therefore, the experts are expecting that the companies will reduce their existing leased space after their leases come to an end. Despite this expectation, 18,200 sqm of modern office space was completed and the premium rents grew and there was a decline in the vacancy rate, says a new Knight Frank report.

The third quarter of 2022 completes the dynamic new supply period observed in the Polish office market in recent years. Between January and September 2022, developers delivered 39 new investments, which increased the sector’s total stock by 560,100 sqm to over 12.7 million sqm. The period under review also registered intense activity on the demand side. At the end of Q3 2022, more than one million sqm was leased across Poland. However, the office market, like other sectors of the commercial real estate market, faces many challenges, including rising energy costs or the expected supply gap and rising rents. AXI IMMO presents data summarizing Q3 2022 in the Polish office market.

Q3 2022 in the Warsaw office market saw record-low developer activity. At the end of September, only 160,000 sqm of space was under construction. As a result, new supply is expected to drop significantly in 2023, with only 60,000 sqm of office space coming to the market, JLL reports.

Office leasing across the country totaled 108,747 sqm in Q3, up 9% compared to the same period of last year, with Bucharest, Iași and Cluj-Napoca recording the biggest volume of transactions, according to real estate consultancy Fortim Trusted Advisors. 

The Prague office real estate market reached several records in the first nine months of 2022. It marked year-on-year records in the growth of new office space, record demand from tenants, and even much more office space was leased this year than a year earlier, according to JLL's regular quarterly analysis.     

According to Savills, development activity has cooled dramatically in the Warsaw office market. There is currently close to 230,000 sqm under construction, of which just over 115,000 sqm is scheduled for completion in 2023–2024.

Since the beginning of the year, five companies have decided to lease a total of 10,000 sqm of office space in Warsaw Spire C, which is almost half of the building. The majority of contracts are renewals of existing leases, two contracts were concluded as green leases. The occupancy rate in Warsaw Spire C is currently over 96%.