CA Immo’s portfolio includes Europe House (Piata Victoriei), Opera Center (Eroilor), Bucharest Business Park (Piata Presei) and Riverplace (Semanatoarea), located in central, northern and western Bucharest. This makes it the third largest office space owner in Romania’s capital city, after Immofinanz and Liviu Tudor, according to ZF data.
CA Immo had its share of empty space during the crisis, especially in Opera Center and Europe House but eventually found tenants and this year renewed contracts with companies like Cosmote, Orange, Computer Generated Solutions, Viveo and Stoica & Asociatii.
Its office space therefore has a higher take-up rate than the rest of the market, considering Bucharest has a supply of more than 300,000 square meters of empty space, which puts the average take-up at about 84%.
CA Immo only has about 300 or 400 square meters not yet rented in the Opera Center. How did it do it?
“The cost factor, that is the rent per square meter was one of the key negotiation factors (…) Rent varies from EUR14.5/square meter to EUR20/square meter from building to building and I can say it went down by less than 10% during the crisis years,” Marian Roman, managing director of CA Immo Romania, told ZF.
The office space the company has is not exactly the newest there is, as Opera Center and Europe House were completed by developers Portland Trust and GTC in the early 2000s. However, three of the complexes (Opera Center, Europe House and Riverplace) have easy access to the subway, which was an important factor tenants considered when deciding whether to stay or to go, at a time when companies are looking for better more efficient space at similar or lower rent.
The solution for owners of older buildings is to continue investments in those buildings to avoid problems that might disrupt the business of the tenants. Roman says he remodeled reception areas every four or five years and made sure air conditioning systems worked properly.
CA Immo’s real estate assets are worth more than EUR400 million. Other than the four office complexes, the company also owns a retail project in Sibiu where it developed a do it yourself store for Germany’s OBI, and the largest logistics project on the Bucharest-Pitesti highway, where tenants include Altex, Interbrands, Gebruder Weiss, FM Logistic, Macromex and E van Wijk.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)