Ghelamco Poland has started the construction of its first office project in the city of Kraków. The building, called .big, will be located at the junction of Generała Bohdana Zielińskiego and Kapelanka streets. The project will offer 10,000 sqm of office and 1,500 sqm of commercial space. Completion is scheduled for mid-2017. Cushman & Wakefield is the leasing agent for .big.

The growth of the start-up culture and the high-tech sector, leading to an ever larger number of projects that require swift staff reorganisations, has sparked a boom on the Polish market of co-working space and serviced offices, as revealed by real estate advisory firm Savills in its latest report Flexible Workplaces in Poland.

Cresa, a tenant-only commercial real estate firm, has opened its second Polish office in the city of Wrocław. The new office is headed by Michał Grabikowski, who is also the Head of Tenant Representation, Office Department of Cresa Poland in Wrocław.

From Q1 to Q3 2017 companies in Poland signed lease agreements for over 1 million sqm of modern office space while nearly 548,000 sqm was delivered to market. Furthermore, 1.8 million sqm of is under construction. JLL summarised the situation on the Polish office market at the end of Q3 2017.

Real estate developer AFI Europe Romania announced the start of the leasing campaign for the AFI Park Brasov Class A office project. The company is already in advanced discussions with two potential tenants to occupy 4,000 sqm GLA in the first office tower developed in AFI Park Brasov.

Cushman & Wakefield selected Budapest as the location of their Portfolio Services Centre (PSC) solution. The new 1,300 sqm PSC is located in the Studium Office Building, close to Corvinus University and many cultural venues and sights. The team is being led by Byron Tudor who has joined from Goldman Sachs International.

The construction of building H, the eighth element of Bonarka for Business (B4B), an office complex in Krakow, has recently started. At completion, the office building will provide approx. 10,000 sqm GLA and 209 parking spaces for the tenants, extending the B4B complex to a total of 75,000 GLA. Meanwhile, GlobalLogic, an existing tenant in B4B since 2016, signed a lease agreement for an additional 1,274 sqm GLA.

The Bulgarian property market is booming with the total transaction volume expected to exceed €1 billion in 2017. The outlook for the future is highly positive: strong demand, underpinned by solid economic growth, encourages developers to start new projects in all segments of the market.

The office markets of Central European capitals are growing dynamically with the number of new leases on the rise and vacancy rates hitting record lows in several cities. In light of all this it is no surprise that development activity is also heating up on the most popular markets of the region.

Continued growth in the investment attractiveness of Warsaw has resulted in high demand for modern office space and is matched by tremendous developer activity. JLL summarised the situation on the Warsaw office market at the end of Q3 2017.