2011, a new beginning on office market

2011 is set to be the year of a new wave of projects for the experienced office market developers though the vacancy rate in Bucharest is still around 15%.

Real estate groups such as Portland Trust, GTC and AIG Lincoln, as well as Raiffeisen Evolution, Nusco Imobiliara or Anchor Grup are still betting on the office segment and are ready to put projects with an area of almost 200,000 square metres on the Bucharest market in the next two or three years, though Bucharest now holds empty spaces of around 300,000 square metres.

A series of projects are being “revitalised” after a longer period of inactivity, while others are started from scratch and the value of investments likely to be started this year is put at around 400m euros. The sum is ten times higher than the value of projects started last year, when only Belgium’s Atenor started works for an 18,000 square metre office building in Pipera, while Cotroceni Park’s owners began raising a 13,000 square metre building near the mall.