“The continuation of operations is an essential element for companies in all fields of activity. This has been seen throughout the time, in the way companies would secure the access to electricity, servers and Internet in order to cope with any kind of situation. The Covid-19 pandemic put these companies to a new test, namely, to become operational from home, from one day to another. The way in which most companies have managed to handle this transition represents an additional argument which recommends Romania as one of the most attractive hubs of IT and connected services in Europe and not only”, said Madalina Cojocaru, Partner, Office Agency, Cushman & Wakefield Echinox.
A recent study by UK’s Broadband Deals platform places Bucharest first in a ranking of world’s 50 best cities for working from home. The ranking considered the internet speed, the availability of remote working jobs, the home-related costs and the existence of home delivery platforms. The next three spots are held by the cities of Houston, Las Vegas and Atlanta in the United States.
In the European ranking, Bucharest is followed by the cities of Budapest, Kiev and Warsaw.
On the short term, consultants expect a more conservative approach from some companies, which will have to assess the impact of this situation on the entire customer portfolio. However, on the medium and long term, the local market will be rewarded due to the capacity and flexibility of working from home, if the case may be.
On the other hand, most companies are looking into the opportunity of offering their employees a greater flexibility in terms of workplace after social distancing measures have been eased, but they are also drafting plans to reduce office space density, as a measure of sanitation safety.
In the first quarter of 2020, Bucharest was the delivery of 81,000 square meters of new office space. The most important deliveries were the Ana Tower and the third building of the Globalworth Campus project in Pipera (northern Bucharest).
New office space of nearly 145,000 sqm are expected to be delivered by the end of 2020. Thus, the total volume of new office space is envisaged at nearly 226,000 sqm, lower by nearly 21% compared with the office space deliveries in 2019.
In terms of demand, the office space volume traded in Bucharest fell 50% on the year to 52,000 sqm in the first quarter of 2020, whereas across Romania, the volume remained stable, at nearly 21,000 sqm, with intense activity in the cities of Timisoara, Cluj and Iasi, as well as in Craiova, which is starting to attract more and more office space occupiers.
The office space stock in Bucharest reaches approximately 3.2 million sqm, and a slightly higher vacancy rate, of 9.8%, while the surface area of modern office space in Romania’s large regional cities – Cluj-Napoca, Timisoara, Iasi and Brasov – is nearing the threshold of 1 million sqm.