New data from Colliers International suggests that a significant number of firms in CEE could consider a hybrid mix of remote and office-based work for their employees going forward, with proptech applications likely to grow in use for remote team and project management.
The Colliers ExCEEding Borders Office Snapshot, which covers the 14 CEE capital cities, forecasts that a fair amount of market activity in 2020 will come from lease renegotiations and renewals, as opposed to new and pre-lease transactions.
Other trends could include more sub-leasing where companies need to downsize, while tenant covenants are likely to receive additional scrutiny by landlords, banks and investors in order to limit risk.
The report suggests that landlords will spend much of the year in challenging negotiations with occupiers, as the latter review their real estate strategies. With changing footprint requirements, flexible and hybrid solutions are likely to grow in popularity.
A recent global survey from Colliers found that many employees would like to continue working from home at least once or twice per week after Covid-19 has settled down.
'We believe it is important to test a range of scenarios to be prepared to rebalance and right size the workplace at the right moment,' said the report's authors.
The total modern office stock in the 14 CEE capital cities at the end of Q1 2020 reached almost 26.4 million m2. In Q1 2020, developers completed over 288,000 m2, with more than 3.6 million m2 currently under construction and due for delivery over the next 2-3 years.
The largest supply of modern office space in the region is recorded in Warsaw (5.6 million m2), Budapest (3.7 million m2) and in Prague (3.7 million m2).
For the take-up trend year-on-year only Riga and Bratislava recorded an increase. Take-up activity in Warsaw, Prague, Kyiv, Tirana and Bucharest decreased.
