Advisory agency Walter Herz is expanding the scope of consulting services and branching out with a new business line - Walter Herz Invest. The entity is responsible for purchasing and securing real estate and land for the construction of projects in the commercial, warehouse and residential sectors.

Interest in leasing offices in Poland is growing. In the third quarter, both in Warsaw and on the regional markets, the demand for office space was the highest this year. In the regions, 2023 will close with a result similar to the record from 2019. 

Investors in Poland are looking for market opportunities and value-add assets. Companies are optimizing their portfolios by putting up for sale properties that do not fit their new investment strategies, says Walter Herz. 

For many real estate market leaders who came to Expo Real 2023, it was an opportunity to look for new investment opportunities in the face of more difficult macroeconomic and economic conditions in the world. Experts from Walter Herz advisory agency share their insights on the current situation in the Polish property market. 

TFG Asset Management, a company providing services to the owner of the building - GNT Ventures Gdańsk, has chosen Walter Herz as sole agent for the lease of space in CUBE Office Park complex, located at Pałubickiego Street in Gdańsk. The cooperation includes the commercialization of office buildings offering a total leasable area of over 19.7 thousand sqm.

Total demand for office space on regional markets in the first half of the year was similar to last year’s level, but there were more vacant offices in all major markets, except Warsaw. Warsaw recorded a 30 percent decrease in demand for offices, and yet the vacancy rate decreased. Only a few office projects are being implemented across Poland, says Walter Herz. 

In 2022, the value of transactions on the Polish commercial real estate market amounted to approximately € 5.8 billion, which showed that after the difficult years of the pandemic and the outbreak of conflict in the East, Poland turned out to be a stable market with a large group of investors interested in investing capital in our country and a wide range of attractive investment products. However, in the first half of 2023, we witnessed the previously expected investment slowdown. After six months of  2023, the total investment volume amounted to only around €800 million, which means a decrease of 70 per cent compared to the same period a year earlier, says Bartłomiej Zagrodnik, CEO of Walter Herz advisory agency.

There are more and more vacant office spaces on the regional markets in Poland. In Warsaw, despite the decline in demand, the availability of offices is getting smaller, says Walter Herz. 

When choosing an office, the location is crucial, the costs related to maintaining workplaces are becoming increasingly important for companies, while ESG-related matters are of little importance to them - these are the main conclusions of the latest survey conducted by Walter Herz among the tenants of office space in Warsaw.

This year, we can observe a decrease in investor activity in the commercial real estate sector throughout Europe. The value of the investment volume in the first quarter of 2023 decreased in Poland by over 60 per cent year-on-year, and in some Western European markets by as much as 90 per cent. The Polish market boasts higher rates of return than those offered by Western Europe and still compares favourably with European markets. According to Walter Herz, investors are looking for opportunities in the Polish commercial real estate market.