“The 2019 deliveries come after two years with a consistent demand, but with a lower level of deliveries: projects with a lettable area of 138,000 and 145,000 square meters were completed in 2017 and 2018 respectively. The new projects have been successful in terms of early securing important anchor tenants: financial groups such as ING, Erste – BCR, Allianz or PricewaterhouseCoopers, in an extremely dynamic market where demand is at a record level. Taking into account the buildings about to be delivered, we can affirm that the office stock in Bucharest reached the 3 million square meters threshold, out of which 1 million square meters have been built between 2014 and 2019,” said Madalina Cojocaru, Partner, Office Agency at Cushman & Wakefield Echinox.
Historically, 2009 was been the best year for the local office market in terms of deliveries, when developers delivered about 322,000 sqm. The most important projects delivered in 2009 were BOC, Global City Business Park, Floreasca Business Park and Cubic Center, at a time when developers were especially active in the Pipera area, while the development of the Floreasca – Barbu Vacarescu office hub was just starting.
In the first half of the year developers delivered 128,000 sqm: Renault Bucharest Connected, The Mark, Oregon Park C, The Bridge II, Office 1 and Mihai Eminescu Offices projects.
In the second half of 2019 the volume of deliveries could be double, the most important projects being Business Garden (41,000 sqm), Ana Tower (41,000 sqm), Expo Business Park (38,000 sqm), Globalworth Campus III (35,000 sqm), The Light I (23,000 sqm), Timpuri Noi Square 1b (20,000 sqm) and Equilibrium I (19,000 sqm), along with a number of other smaller buildings.
Transactions totaling 196,000 sqm of office spaces have been closed in the first half of 2019, the largest ones involving Ericsson (16,000 sqm in West Gate), eMag (15,000 sqm in Swan Office Park), ING Tech (13,000 sqm in Dacia One) and Allianz (9,000 sqm in Globalworth Campus).
Cushman & Wakefield Echinox also notes a slight increase in headline rents for the office spaces located in the central area, where premium buildings are rented at a level between EUR17.5 and EUR19/sqm/month, while in the Central-North area rents are between EUR15.5 – EUR17/sqm/month.