The BEM Center office building has been handed over and with it the first tenants have arrived, including the investor and developer Market Asset Management Zrt.

Whilst significant ink has flowed in relation to the ‘E’ pillar from the vast ESG spectrum, the ‘S’ pillar is beginning to catch up in prominence particularly in the office sector across the UK and Continental Europe. Post-Covid behaviours have had a massive impact on the office offering and workforce demands - the office is by no means dead, but its role has certainly had a significant rethink, writes Mirela Calota, Director, Deal Advisory - Real Estate and Infrastructure at KPMG, in an article prepared for Property Forum.

The retail sector accounted for 58% of the total investment transaction volume that reached €500 million during 2023 in Romania, according to data from iO Partners in collaboration with JLL.

The construction of Bratislava Vydrica by Lucron is progressing. Currently, the sale of offices in office building V3 on the Danube embankment has been launched.

According to a recent report published by Newmark Polska, total office take-up in 2023 in the largest Polish regional cities surpassed 741,300 sqm - an increase of almost 19% year-on-year and 7% from the pre-pandemic 2019 peak. Meanwhile, issues related to ESG, functionality improvements, efficient office space management and optimisation of lease costs have filtered through into the vocabulary and strategies of tenants and developers alike.

The volume of vacant office space in Warsaw is shrinking as the number of office buildings under construction and delivered to the market is low and occupier demand remains stable, reveals BNP Real Estate Poland in its quarterly report. Meanwhile, older office buildings are undergoing refurbishment as approximately 70% of existing stock is energy inefficient.

Bucharest’s office stock edged close to 3.4 million sqm at the end of 2023, following the completion of projects with a combined area of 110,000 sqm last year. However, the market will see fewer deliveries by the end of 2025 as developers have put projects on hold due to uncertainties around demand caused by the adoption of hybrid work.

Existing office buildings will be increasingly sought after by companies due to a lacklustre development pipeline in Bucharest, which will continue to drive contract extension deals in Bucharest.

Immofinanz has successfully closed the sale of the Grand Center Zagreb office property to a Croatian real estate company. This transaction represents a further step in the optimisation of the portfolio.

While 116,000 sqm of office spaces were leased in Bucharest during Q4 2023, the overall transactional volume climbed to 463,000 sqm during the whole year, marking an all time take-up record, according to a Cushman & Wakefield Echinox report.