User expectations have changed significantly during the past couple of years and this is a challenge that most landlords do not take lightly. Mátyás Gereben MRICS, Country Manager of CPI Hungary talked to Property Forum about the changing needs of office tenants and the shopping centre of the future.

OTP Real Estate Investment Fund has acquired the 26,000 sqm Roosevelt office building in central Budapest. The seller was Munich-based GLL Real Estate Partners (GLL).

Českomoravská Nemovitosti has acquired the BLOX office building in Prague's Dejvice district for more than €77 million (CZK 2 billion). The building's primary tenant is Amazon.  The acquisition was financed by ČSOB.

The number of office schemes built in Prague this year is the highest in the last five years: a total of 17 new buildings providing office space will have opened by the end of the year. The last time the market reached such a high figure was in 2014 – at the time, it was 18 schemes. In the meantime, the number was one-third lower, about 11 buildings on average.

Do Polish public administration units move with the times? It turns out that more and more of them indeed do - the number of state-owned institutions that have decided to lease space in modern office buildings have markedly increased in the past few years, according to JLL’s latest report.

The One Cotroceni Park project, developed by One United Properties in Bucharest on a 5.8 hectares land plot, will give a new dimension to the Work - Live - Shop concept on the local market, offering a 15,000 square meters retail area, comparable to that of a medium-sized shopping centre, to the future employees and residents who will live within the project.

According to one of CEE’s most active developers, tenants in recent years have become more open to innovative and sustainable solutions when it comes to renting retail or office spaces. Tibor Tatár, CEO of Futureal talked to Property Forum about the company’s current projects and changing tenant expectations. Tibor Tatár will be joining a panel on the Hungarian property market at our upcoming CEE Property Forum 2019 in Vienna.

Nearly 70,200 sqm of office space is currently under construction on Katowice’s office market, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Of the six projects underway, the largest is Face2Face Business Campus, comprising two phases with a total of 46,800 sqm.

Lublin’s total office stock remained unchanged at the end of June 2019, flatlining at 191,200 sqm, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Despite the lack of new supply, occupier activity was healthy, which pushed the city’s vacancy rate down to 10.6%, representing a 9.1 pp decrease year-on-year.

The office space market in Prague is currently doing very well and has a great potential for further development. Its excellent condition is illustrated by several parameters that Cushman & Wakefield has been monitoring on a long-term basis and whose correct interpretation in relation to the current results is presented here. These indicators are primarily the highly positive trend in the office demand (the occupied office space increased by 47,000 sqm), vacancy rate remaining at its record-breaking low (with just 4.6% of stock being vacant) and the highest number of newly opened buildings in the last five years (17 buildings including 11 newly built ones).