How will the current macroeconomic situation affect investment activity and further development within individual sectors, from offices to industrial and logistics complexes to retail real estate? All this is shown in CBRE's latest analysis of the Czech commercial real estate market, which also provides an updated outlook for 2023.

Interest in office space in Prague is not slowing down. Office demand is growing by tens of percents year-on-year, the vacancy rate is slightly decreasing and over 190,000 sqm is under construction, according to the latest office market analysis for Q3 2022 by the Prague Research Forum.

The Romanian self-storage market has reached a leasable area of 25,000 sqm in 2022, which was just 0.2% of the total European market, according to real estate consultancy CBRE.  

CBRE has analysed the Czech commercial real estate market in detail and estimates that the next six months of this year will be as strong as the first six months of the year, which hit the €1.15 billion mark. By the end of the year, according to CBRE, the €2 billion level should be reached, similar to last year and the year before.

The boundary between online and offline shopping is becoming increasingly vague. There is an evident retail trade trend toward the omnichannel, i.e. combining various sales channels tailored to the consumer's individual needs. This requires the development of e-commerce which has significantly accelerated recently. In the last 5 years, the share of online sales in Central and Eastern Europe grew by 9 pps to 15%, and in 4 years' time is bound to amount to 20%, according to CBRE's forecasts. Poland and Czechia are leaders in terms of online shopping growth in the region. E-commerce's market share in these countries in 2026 may be as high as almost a quarter.

Since February this year, Natalia Wenzławska, who took the position of Head of Marketing, is responsible for marketing and communication at CBRE in Poland. She will lead a team of a dozen or so people, whose tasks will focus on the implementation of the company's overall communication strategy.

As of summer 2022, leasing activity in the Kyiv office market was near a standstill and primarily driven by office optimization, as well as lease renewals and renegotiations of existing leases, according to the latest research of CBRE Ukraine. Whereas, as of the beginning of June, we observed a slight recovery in the level of office occupancy by employees who continued to work or who returned to Kyiv. Thus, typical office attendance among corporate occupiers was ca. 10% with many tenants in IT, high tech & telecommunications, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, agriculture, FMCG and industrial sectors planning to increase occupancy to 15%.

Around 500,000 sqm of logistics spaces have been leased in Romania in the first semester of the year, up 38% compared to the same period of last year, with the largest pre-leased surface of almost 88,000 sqm secured in Prahova County, according to property consultancy CBRE Romania. 

The modern office stock in Romania has reached 4.3 million sqm at the end of the first semester of 2022, with another 335,300 sqm slated for delivery by the end of 2023, according to real estate consultancy CBRE. 

Bucharest recorded 10 of the 14 major property transactions closed in the first half of 2022, while the overall volume of investment rose by 6% to €323 million compared to the first half of 2021, according to real estate consultancy CBRE.