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Q1 2023 saw a recovery in the Prague office space market. Growing demand may be met with lower availability of new premium space in the coming years, as only a smaller number of new projects are currently under construction. This may affect the currently stabilized price level of rents. Serviced office centres and ESG-compliant projects are on the rise. These findings come from a quarterly market survey conducted by Colliers.

The period of stagnation and waiting on the Prague residential market is over. Along with the spring came a revival in the Prague housing market. The demand is rising, and interest in buying and renting is also growing, according to the latest Knight Frank report.

The investment panel at Prague Property Forum 2023 focused on investment opportunities and financing. While banks emphasized that they are ready to lend money, perhaps more cautiously, investors talked more about waiting for the right moment when investment opportunities appear. The great potential of the Czech market is mainly in the local money and local investors, which gives the market stability, participants agreed.

Sofia's office market is moving at two speeds, with projects in the prime segment performing distinctly better than the rest of the market. These are the main insights of the latest report by Cushman & Wakefield Forton. The hybrid model of work is permanently imposed and breaks the link between business growth and hiring new space, especially in the segment of IT and BPO companies

According to Dr Aleš Pustovrh at the EECFA, which conducts research on the construction markets of 8 Eastern European countries, residential construction boom in Slovenia continues and is set to peak this year. Nevertheless, with increasing interest rates on mortgage loans, residential construction will be facing significantly lower demand in the second half of 2023.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine has led to huge destruction, the volume of construction waste has reached a critical level and continues to increase. Iryna Nastych summarised the situation in an article prepared by the Ukrainian Real Estate Club for Property Forum.

In the first quarter of 2023, the total office stock in Bratislava represented 2.02 million sqm. Compared to the previous quarter, the prime rent rose to the level of €17.5/sqm/month, the Bratislava Research Forum reports.

The planned Highest Construction Office (Nejvyšší stavební úřad) and the system of regional construction offices subordinate to it will not be established in the Czech Republic. The construction authorities will remain within the municipalities, the Czech News Agency (ČTK) reports.

Analysts at Bencont Investments have recorded sales of only 197 apartments in new buildings in Bratislava in Q1 2023. According to them, the unit price of available apartments remained at €4,900/sqm. In Q1, the supply consisted of as many as 3,229 vacant apartments in new buildings. Realisation prices increased by 20% year-on-year, but there was a 1.43% quarter-on-quarter decrease. Q1 2023 was thus still marked by weakening demand, according to the quarterly real estate market analysis of Bencont.

The Czech industrial and logistics market reached the 11 million sqm mark at the end of the first quarter of 2023. It has grown by more than 1 million sqm over the past 12 months. During Q1 2023, a total of 217,900 sqm of new industrial space was completed, representing an increase of 25 % quarter-on-quarter (Q4 2022 vs. Q1 2023). Approximately 1.23 million sqm of industrial space is currently under construction, 34 % of which is being built on a speculative basis. Despite the high volume of new completions, the vacancy rate remains low, at the level of 1.4 %, JLL reports.