“Just don’t get tied up anywhere.” The office market is now dominated by flexible contracts and colourful interiors. The guest of Agenda SZ Byznys was Alexandra Němcová from Cimex.
The office market is recovering from covid stagnation. Approximately 50,000 sqm of new office space was created in the first half of this year, with another 28,000 sqm to be completed by the end of the year.
“It’s not a big number, but it’s an increase of more than 40 per cent compared to the extremely weak year of 2021. There are currently about 200,000 sqm under construction, which will be added in the next year or two,” says Alexandra Němcová, Director of Asset Management at Cimex.
In her experience, people are returning to the office again. Mostly, though, it’s a hybrid, meaning a few days off work, a few days a week from home.
The most “trendy” address is currently Prague’s Karlín, followed by Pankrác.
Increasingly, however, entrepreneurs in Prague are turning to shared offices. They rent work space for individuals and entire teams. And it can be for a single day.
“In the last six months, we have created three thousand square metres of these furnished offices and the demand for them is great. And I must say that our competition is also very well cast,” said Alexandra Němcová. They are therefore preparing another office building for “sharing”, this time on Wenceslas Square.
Rents to rise in January at the latest
Companies are expecting further increases, this time for office rent and other services, mainly due to expensive energy. “This is a trend that affects not only the Czech Republic, but the whole of Central Europe.”
“It makes a difference whether rents are paid in euros or crowns. The base estimate of the appreciation is around 16.5 percent, with prices in euros around 7.5 to eight percent,” says the woman who manages the commercial property portfolio at Cimex.
In an interview with SZ Byznys, the group plans to convert two of its office buildings into apartments in the next few years. “We are still in the phase of architectural studies, it concerns one building in Prague 10 and one building in Prague 4,” Alexandra Němcová explained the group’s further plans.
“We selected buildings that for some reason are no longer technically relevant to today’s market, which means that it makes sense to reconstruct them, and as part of the reconstruction we decided to change their use to housing. It is also offered because of the localities there, they are residential zones,” she added.
Rental apartments could replace offices in about three years. The exact budget is still being fine-tuned by Cimex – also due to the fluctuating prices of construction materials and the cost of construction work. However, it will definitely be an investment in the hundreds of millions of crowns.
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