The floor area of newly completed office buildings in the Czech Republic fell by 20 percent last year. This year, we can expect a renewed increase, but this will be driven only by previously completed projects, with virtually no new office buildings being built this year, according to an analysis by facility management company ISS Czech Republic.

Prague's Arkády Pankrác shopping centre is changing hands. The Czech real estate fund Trigea is buying it from the Israeli company G City for €265 million, according to information from Trinity Bank, newstream.cz reports.

As it was unofficially confirmed last month, Sekyra Group has agreed with Dostupné bydlení České spořitelny and the insurance company Kooperativa on the sale of the Opatov II residential project in Prague 11. This is one of the largest build-to-rent (BTR) transactions in the Czech Republic, Sekyra Group announced. The price of the transaction was not disclosed. 

The second quarter of 2023 in the Czech Republic was characterized by record industrial construction, with more than 60 percent of it already pre-leased. The vacancy rate rose slowly to the current 1.7 percent, indicating a prevailing market sentiment that sees speculative construction and a recent-record high amount of space under construction, according to the latest analysis by the Industrial Reserch Forum.

One year after construction began, the rough construction of one of the future A1 office building in Prague's Rohan City project has been completed. Upon completion, the building will house the headquarters of Sekyra Group, the developer of the Rohan City project, among others. It is being built on a brownfield site on Rohanský island in Prague 8, which has been unused for many years.

Unlike in the Czech Republic, developers in Poland can rely on the deadlines given by law which makes it a lot easier to do business. Marcela Fialková, Strategy Director of Czech-based developer UDI Group talked to Property Forum about the challenges and opportunities different markets in CEE offer.

Czech investment group Enern and Lincoln Property Company, an American company operating in the European market including Slovakia, have started construction of a new office project in Warsaw called The FORM. The project was purchased by the new owners in 2021 from Penta Real Estate. Its financing includes recently issued bonds worth €30 million with an annual coupon of six and a half percent, which are managed and secured by J&T Bank. The bonds are listed and traded on the Bratislava Stock Exchange, trend.sk reports.

Exyte Technology will lease 12,600 sqm at VGP Park Ústí nad Labem City as a new tenant. There will be 3 halls in total within the VGP Park, one will be finished this year, and the other two are being prepared.

Desk sharing is beginning to take root in Czech offices. Not only does it make office space usage more efficient, but it also offers employees greater comfort. In fact, companies usually invest up to half as much in standard, individual workstations as they would in traditional office layouts, reports Colliers.

YIT is the new owner of the Kuta Centrum office complex in Prague 4. In the future, the complex, renamed YIT Office Centrum, should be transformed into a residential complex, the CEO of YIT told online daily newstream.cz.