Promenade Gardens, a recently completed office building on Budapest’s Váci corridor, changed owners on 1 August 2018, when Erste Real Estate Fund purchased the 97% leased property from the developer, Budapest-based Horizon Development. The new, dual certified (LEED Gold and BREEAM Very Good) asset of 25,000 sqm has already been chosen by a number of international tenants such as Celanese and Citibank, with more signed deals to be revealed soon.

The end of the first semester has brought to light great achievements from regional cities in all real estate segments on the Romanian market. Bucharest has also performed well and, according to the real estate consultancy company Colliers International Romania, the prospects for the remainder of the year remain strong.

The boom continues. At the end of H1 2018, supply on Poland’s office markets exceeded 10 million sqm. Furthermore, 1.8 million sqm remains under construction, with 1.1 million sqm being developed outside Warsaw. JLL summarised the situation on the Polish office market in H1 2018.

Office developers have for years been struggling with the speed of new technologies. While the innovation cycle in high tech lasts for around 18 months, the development process for office buildings still takes around five years. To ensure tenants and users have easy access to new solutions, Skanska has created an all-in-one operating system for office buildings and workplaces, which can be upgraded over time just like a smartphone.

Real estate developers pay special attention to the environment by developing efficient and sustainable, green certified projects. With a history of almost four years, the WELL Building Standard complements these certifications and shifts the attention from the built environment to the health of the employees. In Romania, this phenomenon is in its inception and Colliers International Romania is the first real estate consultancy company with a team of WELL professionals – two out of the five that are present on a national level.

Almost 425,000 sqm of modern office space was leased in Warsaw in H1 2018 while an additional 700,000 sqm of offices remain under construction. Rents increase on a par with decreasing vacancy rate. New coworking concepts begin to gain traction as well. JLL summarised the situation on the Warsaw office market at the end of H1 2018.

The share of vacant office space on Prague’s office market increased to 6.9% at the end of Q2 2018, which is in 0.7 percentage points higher than in the previous quarter. Prime headline rents in the city centre also slightly increase. The Prague Research Forum announced the office market figures for Q1 2018.

BNP Paribas Real Estate Poland represented First Property in the successful acquisition of Krakow Business Park (KBP).

Leasing activity in the Budapest office market remained strong with more than 253,000 sqm of office space leased in the first half of 2018. In total, commercial real estate agencies were involved in 173,000 sqm of office leasing transactions, from which CBRE completed the largest amount of transactions, 42,245 sqm equating to 24.4% market share in the agents market.

Last June, Cushman & Wakefield was appointed as an exclusive commercialisation agent for building “B” of the LIXA office complex being developed by Yareal in Warsaw’s Wola district. The first phase of the development project (buildings A and B) comprising 27,900 sqm of leasable space is expected to be delivered to the market in Q3 2020.