Iași and Timișoara top big cities’ offices market ranking

The offices market in Romanian big cities, except Bucharest, was up by 46 percent in the first nine months of 2015 compared to the previous period of last year, mounting to 37,417 rented square meters. The largest transacted areas are in Iasi and Timisoara, according to an Esop Consulting study.

Iași tops the offices market ranking, with a total of 14,603 rented square meters, while Timișoara comes second, with 11,658 sqm and Cluj-Napoca third, with 4,200 sqm. Brașov follows- 3,800 sqm, Oradea- 1,756 sqm and Bacau- 1,400 sqm.

“Following the rapid growth of the Bucharest offices market, we estimate the same speedy development of the main university centers in the country in the upcoming 3-4 years: Iași, Timișoara, Cluj-Napoca, as the university education workforce request is growing and Bucharest labour market has become pretty competitive so that IT&C, BTO, Share Services companies start looking for solutions to maintain the good results obtained so far in Romania,” said Alexandru Petrescu, Esop Consulting managing partner.

Among companies that rented offices outside Bucharest in A-type buildings this year there are Xerox in Iasi, Accenture Services (Iaşi, Timisoara), Hella (Timişoara), Amazon (Iaşi), Bitdefender (Iaşi), Unicredit (Iaşi) and Ness (Timişoara).

Among the offices attracting the tenants’ attention were Palas and Unites Business Center 3 in Iaşi, City Business Center and UPC Open Ville in Timişoara, The Office in Cluj-Napoca.

The student number in a city represents an important factor for the evolution of the offices market in the upcoming years. Thus, the first three Romanian cities ranking first on student number –Iași, Cluj-Napoca and Timișoara- are the same ranking first on offices transaction in the country.

Most of the students have been registered last year in Bucharest- 133,601, Cluj-Napoca- 56,829, Iași-42,298, Timișoara-30,535, Constanța-19,182, Craiova-17,461, Brașov-15,114, Sibiu-11,550 and Oradea- 11,124.