The office market in Romania registered last year the highest rate of deliveries in the past seven years, and the upward trend will continue in 2017 too, real estate experts believe.
During the current year, the stock of office space will increase by almost 352,000 sqm, with a large development both in the capital and other major cities, according to Colliers International. Just like last year, the demand will come mainly from IT companies and BPO (business process outsourcing) / SSC (shared service center).
“Considering the development of services industry, which became the second largest contributor to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), we expect this sector to bring office space expansion in Bucharest and other major university centers such as Iasi and Cluj-Napoca. Also, cities like Timisoara and Brasov are prepared to develop new office hubs due to the demand from the engineering sector. Therefore, we estimate that the current stock of 3 million sqm nationwide will increase by approximately 352,000 sqm in 2017, of which 265,000 sqm will be in Capital and 87,000 sqm in secondary cities,” George Didoiu, associate director within Office Department, Colliers International, stated.
Although many companies have expanded in recent years in Bucharest, Iasi (Accenture, Xerox, Amazon, Unicredit, Oracle), Cluj-Napoca (Arvato, Impact Hub, Sig Comiblock, Magneti Marelli), Timisoara (Continental, Huawei, HP) and Brasov (Tata, Continental, Siemens), the office market in Romania still faces difficulties.
“While cities such as Iasi or Craiova must develop their stock of office spaces, Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca are focusing on improving the technical skills and Timisoara and Brasov – on increasing the workforce availability. If these issues would be solved, we believe that almost 20,000 persons/year would be employed in Bucharest, which would result an annual demand for offices of 160,000 sqm. In turn, Cluj-Napoca and Iasi might add approximately 50,000 sqm annually to the existing stock,” Didoiu added.
In 2016, , the stock of office space in Bucharest reached the 2.1 million sqm threshold due to new deliveries, which amounted to 230,000 sqm.