Last year was a demanding period for the office market and a test for us, which we managed to successfully pass, says Katarzyna Zawodna-Bijoch, President and CEO at Skanska’s commercial development business unit in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE). In 2022, we will witness safe and futureproof workplaces, new technologies as well as Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) areas becoming increasingly important, with the latter being subject to continuous intensive analyses as a business trend.

Indotek Group has completed the acquisition of 11 office buildings in 5 business parks in Belgrade from GTC. With the closing of one the recent years’ largest transactions in CEE, Indotek Group has further strengthened its position in the regional real estate market and is now present in 12 countries.

The volume of real estate investments in Romania gained 4% year-on-year to €919.45 million, driven by office and industrial developments, according to a report by real estate consultancy Fortim T.A., a member of BNP Paribas Real Estate. 

Echo Investment signed a preliminary sale agreement for three office buildings in Fuzja Łódź, that will be acquired for over €56.4 million by KGAL Group, an independent investment and asset manager. The buildings encompass 22,000 sqm of BREEAM-certified office space. They are a part of mixed-use Fuzja, a project revitalizing a post-industrial area of Łódź.

Despite almost all European office employees working from home last year the empty workplaces did not lead to a reduction in the expenditure that companies had to fulfil had the workforce been in the office. The average costs per FTE fell by only 2% and amounted to €9,468. These findings have been published by Colliers, Occupier Cost Index (OCI), which comprises data from 29 countries, 3,990 buildings, 26.1 million square meters of office space and 1.96 million FTEs.

Property group Yellow Tree has purchased an office building near Romană Square in central Bucharest from Mecanoexportimport. The Mecano Export-Import building has a leasable area of 3,000 sqm and was finalized in 2004. The deal, with an undisclosed value, was first reported by profit.ro. 

Commercial real estate market in Poland has come a long way since the spring of 2020. Never before have so many changes been made in such a short time. Adaptation to new conditions turned out to be the most difficult for hotels and retail. For the warehouse market, in turn, the reshuffling of sales and deliveries became a springboard for a series of records. The offices returned in a new form. Nowadays, the new trends that will shape the market in the upcoming years, lead the way for the real estate sector. Experts from Walter Herz consulting company comment on what is changing.

Griffes ended 2021 with a significant office leasing surge, placing the agency as the second best performing real estate player in the intermediated office leasing segment in Romania. The achievement tops Griffes’ 5 years of activity on the Romanian real estate landscape which the company celebrated at the end of the year. The team extended significantly its activities throughout 2021, growing into land sales and industrial leasing by marketing a large-scale project to be developed next to Budapest Airport in Hungary.

Property developer GTC has received LEED Gold certification for the Cascade Office Building located in central Bucharest. 

Skanska has sold two office projects in Poland to Stena Real Estate BV, an international property company that is part of the privately owned Swedish Stena Group. The first phase of the Centrum Południe complex in Wroclaw, consisting of two joint office buildings, and the last building of the High5ive complex in Krakow, comprises 39,400 sqm of office space. The projects are designed and built in line with ESG principles. It is the second transaction between the two parties in CEE since the second building from the Spark office complex in Warsaw was acquired in 2020.