The Warsaw Research Forum has issued its figures for the Warsaw Office Market for 2006. The market data prepared by the team concerns modern office stock, take-up, completions of new buildings and vacancy rates in two defined areas of Warsaw: the City Centre (CC) and Non Central locations (NC). The Warsaw Research Forum’s results, as at the end of 2006, are summarized in the table below.
There was just over 412,000 m2 of activity (take-up) in the office market in 2006, making it another record year for Warsaw. Of this, 7% could be accounted for by owner-occupier usage, whilst simple renewals of existing leases were worth 64,600 m2 (16%). A relatively large share of deal activity came through expansions, with tenants agreeing with their current landlords to take an extra 46,700 m2 (i.e. 11% of total take up). The largest deals in the City Centre were signed in Millennium Plaza (ABG Ster-Projekt – 5.900 m2) and Riverside Park (Polbank EFG – 4.800 m2). In Non Central Locations the largest deal came when Fortis Bank leased a total of 11,200 m2 in Trinity Park II.
21 buildings were completed during 2006, bringing a total of 186,700 m2 of new office space onto the market. The largest was Rondo1 (55,000 m2) in the core of the city centre. However, most completed office projects were in other zones, examples being Prosta Office Centre, on the fringe of the City Centre (18,600 m2), and Trinity Park I (18.100 m2) and Cirrus (12,900 m2) in Mokotów. The vacancy rate at the end of 2006 stood at 5.4% for Warsaw as a whole, a fall of 1.2 percentage points from the corresponding period a year earlier. The difference between the rates of vacant space in the central zones and the suburbs has now closed. The market is loosest in the City Centre – Core district where 9.5% of space is vacant. The vacancy rate in the popular Mokotów (US) zone fell to 3%.