Dunwell, an industrial real estate broker, released a complex industrial market analysis for 2020. Real estate agencies brokered more than 650,000 sqm of warehousing spaces last year, throughout Romania. Most of the contracts were new leases, which is very positive from a commercial perspective.
Against all fears, pessimistic forecasts and slowed workload, 2020 was even better than 2019 concerning leased industrial spaces (more than 650,000 sqm vs. 475,000 sqm).
Q1 and Q3 were both in 2019 and 2020 lower in value compared to Q2 and Q4. This aspect can be related to January when the start of the year can be slower, as well as July and August, which are usually holiday periods. On the other hand, the evident growth of activity during the summer period was noted, where people either gave up their holidays altogether or decreased the duration of their vacations. In the industry, this translated into 117,510 sqm being transacted in Q3 2020 vs a little over 60,000 sqm in 2019, Q3 being also the slowest trimester of the year before the pandemic.
The top industries regarding the rented surfaces were FMCG – 38 percent of the market share (boosted last year by the growth of e-commerce), logistics (15 percent of the transactions) and retail (13 percent of all rented surfaces). Production and pharmaceuticals followed.
Most of the contracts were signed in Bucharest, followed by Timisoara, also a major city in this domain and by Craiova, which was last year’s surprise.
The most active developers working with the real estate agencies were WDP, who has rented through them 162,640 sqm, followed close behind by CTP (154,044 sqm) and P3 (133,450 sqm).
“Last March, Europe has known a time of slowdown, once the lockdown was established in several European capital cities. At that time, 2020 seemed to be compromised from an economic perspective, but looks like, from the point of the industrial transaction of view, it has been beneficial and quite active. The market has registered an amazing growth of almost 40 percent and the most encouraging is that most of the transactions (52 percent) were new leases, followed by renewals or renegotiations and pre-leases. This is a very positive sign for the manufacturers and distributors in FMCG and retail,” commented Marian Orzu, Managing Partner at Dunwell.
The 650,000 sqm brokered constitute 84 contracts signed throughout the country, by all the agencies active in the industry.
Dunwell Industrial Brokerage is in the first place regarding the number of signed contracts, having brought 19 new tenants in warehouses suitable for their activities.
“We were extremely active in 2020. 18 out of the 19 transactions that we have brokered were new-leases. This means that we have not waited for things to get going, we made them happen, we have signed the most transactions in the market (new leases also) and we have started 2021 strong, with a very good pipeline, that we are looking forward to turning into reality,” concluded Daniel Cautiș, Managing Partner at Dunwell.
