Nicolae Ciobanu, Partner at Fortim Trusted Advisors
Outside Bucharest, companies leased less than a fifth of the total traded area in Bucharest, according to a study conducted by Fortim Trusted Advisors, a member of the BNP Paribas Real Estate Alliance. In total, the companies leased new modern spaces, at regional level, with a total area of 37,441 sqm, which represents 18% of the volume registered in Bucharest, at the level of 2023. This volume is down from the previous year, 2022, with some of the large deals under negotiation being postponed to this year. The largest volume of new office space was traded in Cluj-Napoca, 33% of all new rentals across all regional centers. On the next places are the cities of Timișoara and Iasi. “In the first quarter of 2024, several lease transactions for office space in Cluj-Napoca are in the final negotiation phase. Recently, there has been an increased demand for spaces with an advanced level of arrangement, capable of ensuring a quick move. Supply remains limited, despite a substantial number of projects under development. The opportunity to accelerate the completion of these projects could be generated by the interest of an anchor company to pre-lease a significant area in an office building scheduled for completion between 2025 and 2026”, said Nicolae Ciobanu, Managing Partner – Head of Advisory at Fortim Trusted Advisors, member on the BNP Paribas Real Estate Alliance. Cluj-Napoca managed to attract the newest tenants, with the largest area, of 12,202 sqm, of spaces rented by companies looking for new offices. Among the new tenants are Sensience, Principal33, Viking Romania, Datanet Systems. Timisoara ranks second in terms of renting new spaces, among the companies that rented new spaces being Access Group Ericsson, SomProduct, HUF. On the other hand, the city of Timisoara registered the highest volume of rentals, together with regional renegotiations of spaces where current tenants remained: over 15,000 sqm. In third place was the city of Iasi, with a total of 9,043 sqm. Among the companies that have moved into new spaces in this city are IBM, Cognizant, BRD, Infineon and RINF. Brasov, although in 2023 it gathered a total area of only 5% of the total, has premises to take revenge in 2024-2025, due to the fact that several new office buildings will be put into use here, in the Coresi Campus project, Phase 4 – U1, with a total of 9,350 sqm. Regarding the fields of activity of office tenants in regional cities, most of them are in the IT&C sector, 61%. The vacancy rate of office space is lower in regional cities than in Bucharest. The lowest vacancy rate is found in Iasi, where in 2023 the largest office project delivered at regional level, formerly Palas Campus, in Iasi, with an area of 60,000 sqm, was put into use, but which had many pre-lease contracts signed a year or two before, from 2021-2022. In 2024 we will no longer have such large deliveries in a regional hub.