Coffee with Craig Show – daily CRE news covering the CEE region, Wednesday, August 3, with Winston Norman, Editor and Chief of EuropaProperty.com.
Crown Holding buys office building in Bucharest
Hungarian Crown Holding has purchased Cascade Office Building in central Bucharest for €10.1 million. The project was completed in 2005 and was purchased by GTC in 2017. Following the sale, GTC made a profit of close to 20 percent.
“The sale of Cascade is a perfect example of exercising this strategy, and I am confident that the sale of Cascade will enable us to make some exciting investments in the future. Over those five years, we have significantly upgraded the building making it more attractive to tenants and obtaining the LEED Gold certification,” said Zoltán Fekete, CEO of GTC.
GTC’s Romanian office portfolio includes City Gate (North and South Towers), Premium Plaza and Premium Point.
Lion’s Head appointment country manager for Romania
Lion’s Head has appointed Alina Necula as Country Manager for Romania. Alina Necula has more than 15 years of experience in Real Estate, focusing on Asset Management, Commercial Management and Real Estate development.
In her new role, Alina Necula will be responsible for coordinating and developing the company’s strategy in Romania, and for identifying new business opportunities and expansion areas for Lion’s Head Group activity.
“I am happy to contribute to the company’s aims of extending its activities and investments and consolidating the business,” said Alina Necula, Country Manager of Lion’s Head Romania.
Industrial and logistics demand surges in Romania
Almost 550,000 sqm of industrial and logistics space was leased in H1 2022 in Romania, a 50 percent increase compared with the same period of 2021, according to data from Cushman & Wakefield Echinox. The volume transacted in Q2 was approximately 240,000 sqm, which was added to the Q1 take-up of more than 300,000 sqm.
Demand was driven by various sectors, such as retail and e-commerce along with logistics and distribution and the automotive industry.
The stock of modern industrial and logistics spaces in Romania exceeded 5.9 million sqm and it will break the 6 million sqm threshold by the end of the year given the developers’ current plans.
Andrei Brînzea, Partner, Land & Industrial Agency, Cushman & Wakefield Echinox, commented: “The industrial and logistics market continues to have a balanced evolution in terms of supply and demand, as we witnessed a national vacancy rate decrease below 4 percent, the lowest level recorded during the last five quarters.”
BIK Wroclaw II reaches full occupancy
Cinno Poland is moving into BIK Wroclaw II, which means that the facility is now 100 percent leased even before it has been completed. Cinno Poland specialises in the servicing of electronic equipment and has leased the remaining 5,260 sqm of space available at the newly built facility.
Completion of the project is scheduled for this quarter.
”This is an important milestone for NREP’s investment in BIK S.A., and we’re very pleased to demonstrate Logicenters’ strong track record of leasing up new developments prior to completion also in our new markets outside The Nordics,” says Søren Rodian Olsen, Managing Director at Logicenters in Poland.
Office demand in regional cities remains strong amid shrinking supply
According to “Office Occupier: Office Market in Regions”, a report published by Newmark Polska, occupier demand remained relatively strong in Poland’s regional city office markets throughout the second quarter of this year amid gradually shrinking office availability. However, persistently high construction costs and rising financing costs continued to limit developer activity in the regional office markets.
Office lettings in the first six months of 2022 totalled almost 343,000 sqm, the highest result for the first half of a year in the history of the regional office markets (Krakow, Wrocław, Tricity, Katowice, Poznań, Łódź, Lublin, and Szczecin). Close to half of the office take-up came from the business services and IT sectors. Manufacturing came third.
“Similarly, as with Warsaw, the regional city office markets also reported increases in lease renegotiations and renewals,” says Agnieszka Giermakowska, Research & Advisory Director, Newmark Polska. “The number of new projects breaking ground is falling due to both persistently high construction costs and rising financing costs.”