Victoria Center is Bucharest’s most appealing office building with a rentable area of below 10,000 square meters, Sky Tower is brokers’ favorite in the category of buildings of above 10,000 square meters, while AFI Park is the most appreciated business park, according to the survey that took into account ten selection criteria.
Ziarul Financiar sent a questionnaire to the most dynamic real estate consultancies in the office market in a bid to identify the most appealing office projects in Bucharest.
The projects, divided into three categories, below 10,000 square meters, above 10,000 square meters and business parks, were graded from 5 to 1 along 10 criteria, namely technical specifications, accessibility, space efficiency, operational efficiency, visibility and design, management service quality, building and neighborhood facilities, price/quality ratio, positive parking rate and the good reputation of existent tenants.
The questionnaire was filled in by companies Activ Property Services, CBRE, Colliers, Crosspoint, DTZ Echinox, Esop, JLL and The Advisers Knight Frank, which could propose any office project in Bucharest. Overall, for the three categories the brokers recommended 40 projects along at least one criterion.
In the category of small buildings, Victoria Center, the headquarters of the domestic subsidiary of US group Citibank, vied with Ethos House projects in Calea Floreasca area, which is about to be completed, and with Olympia Tower of Piata Muncii, known as Eureko group’s headquarters.
Ranking next were two buildings of Victoriei Square, Premium Point and Premium Plaza, owned by Austrian-held group Volksbank, and the sixth position was filled by Dorobanti 239 building, Petrom’s former headquarters.
In the category of buildings of above 10,000 square meters, Sky Tower and Green Gate, completed in the last two years, outrivaled established buildings of Bucharest, such as Charles de Gaulle Plaza, Europe House and America House, though a large part of the new buildings’ spaces are vacant for the time being.
Sky Tower, Raiffeisen Bank’s headquarters, and Green Gate, TeamNet’s headquarters, have better technical features, parking lot numbers above the city’s average and appealing rents. The completion of Promenada mall near Sky Tower, Romania’s tallest office building, was viewed as plus.
As a matter of fact, in the category of business parks, made up of several buildings, the project that was rated best, AFI Park, is also located near a mall, namely AFI Palace Cotroceni.
Ranking second in the third category is Sema Park (Riverplace) development on Semanatoarea platform, while the next two positions are filled by two new projects of northern Bucharest, namely Hermes Business Campus and Green Court.
It’s worth noting that of the 30 projects that entered the Top 10 in the three categories, almost 90% are one kilometer away at the farthest from a subway station, a condition most companies in Bucharest view as crucial when choosing their headquarters.
Bucharest now holds over two million square meters of modern office space and the biggest owners are Austrian groups Immofinanz and CA Immo, Romanian entrepreneur Liviu Tudor and Greek businessman Ioannis Papalekas. They have around 600,000 square meters in their portfolios.
Amid the crisis, the vacancy rate on the office market went beyond 15%, while net rents dropped to around EUR18/square meter in prime areas.
The market has been showing signs of rebound, the number of deals is rising, but the fight for tenants is still fierce as deliveries top 100,000 square meters each year.
In recent years, the IT field has generated the highest demand for offices in Bucharest.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu)