With 17 new brands entering the Romanian market in 2022 and the opening of 11 new retail parks, the total stock of retail projects came close to 4.1 million sqm. On this backdrop, new opportunities appear in the market for developers as the available commercial spaces are mostly rented and the vacancy rate is 3% in malls and even lower in retail parks, according to CBRE.

While the leasing of industrial spaces crossing for the first time the 1 million sqm milestone in 2022, the deliveries of new projects will total around 550,000 sqm during this year, which should take the total stock to a fresh high of 7 million sqm, according to real estate consultancy CBRE. 

While the investment volume will cool this year after the record of transactions worth €‎1.25 billion that was closed in 2022, Romania will remain on the radar of investors throughout 2023, with some trends set to shape the development. CBRE Romania has published a report summarising the driving forces for the local industry this year.

As of Q4 2022 in the Czech industrial market, the extremely low vacancy of around 1% persists. The share of speculative construction has grown to 40% and the modern, developer-led warehouse stock reached almost 10.8 million sqm, so experts expect that it will surpass 11 million sqm by the end of Q1 2023, the Industrial Research Forum announced in their report.

Increase in flexible working patterns brought on by the Covid pandemic has had a positive influence on our ability to juggle these two competing pulls on our time and focus, says Clare Sheils, Managing Director of CBRE in the Czech Republic. She talked to Property Forum about market expectations, the ongoing energy crisis and being a woman in top management in real estate.

CBRE has appointed Daniel Bienias as the new Managing Director of the CEE region. He will take over this role from Andreas Ridder who has been successfully building CBRE’s presence in the region for the last 20 years. Andreas will remain in his position as Managing Director, CBRE Austria.

The entire Revolucija office building, developed by Granit Invest, with more than 10,000 square meters of office, retail and garage space, was leased to one company as a tenant, which was advised by CBRE South Eastern Europe.

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.