Jarosław Fiutowski, Member of the Board responsible for ESG strategy and innovation at Ghelamco Poland, talked to Property Forum about the renewable energy in office buildings,  the awareness of ESG issues among tenants and the related stance of Western investment funds.

In 2023, on Poland’s largest eight regional office markets, developers delivered 280,000 sqm (-31% y/y). It’s bringing the sector’s total stock to 6.68 million sqm (+4% y/y). The new supply slightly increased the vacancy rate, stabilizing around 17.5% (+2.2 pp. y/y) at the end of December 2023. The largest concentration of tenant activity was observed in the largest regional office markets, i.e., Kraków, Wrocław, and the Tricity (about 70% of gross demand), where, in total, companies leased about 520,000 sqm out of 750,000 sqm of all signed contracts in 2023, says Axi Immo.

Demand for lounge-style offices is on the rise across the office world. Fit-out costs have also increased which forces developers and construction companies to prepare projects more thoroughly than before. Property Forum asked Dávid Havas, Development Director at Fitout Zrt. about the latest trends in creating a lovely atmosphere to retain the best employees and use design and build concepts to keep costs low.

Although office leasing opportunities are already very limited in Prague, the good news is that Colliers' survey has reported rather stable rental prices throughout the last year.

CPI Property Group has sold the Concept Tower office building in Warsaw to Wood & Company Real Estate Fund. The price has not been discolsed.

As demand for flexible workspace continues rising IWG has announced three new openings: Regus Budapest Infopark, HQ Budapest F99 and Regus Szépvölgyi will offer private offices, meeting rooms, co-working and creative spaces.

After an unprecedented rise in interest rates, the CE REIF fund has reassessed the price of real estate in its portfolio. Last year's loss is reaching almost 30%, reports DennikN.sk. It is the first real estate fund in Slovakia that has admitted the problems of commercial real estate.

Despite the not-very-encouraging forecasts made by experts at the end of 2022, the office market in the Kyiv region in 2023 demonstrated stability and strengthening demand. Iryna Nastych talked to market experts and summarised the situation in an article prepared by the Ukrainian Real Estate Club for Property Forum  

CTP has signed a lease agreement with PKV BUILD, a leading player in energy consulting. Leased premises are currently being built by CTP at its Vlněna office complex in Brno, Czech Republic.

Although the office development pipeline in Poland’s eight largest regional city markets is clearly shrinking, it is still above that for Warsaw, says BNP Paribas Real Estate Poland in its laterst report. Another notable development of the last quarter of 2023 was that the overall regional vacancy rate hit an all-time high by the end of December.