Green Corner was the largest building to be delivered to the market in Q4 Courtesy of Skanska Property Poland

Eleven buildings totaling 120,000 sqm were added to the Warsaw office market in Q4 2012, which took the modern office stock to 3,859,000 sqm, according to data from the Warsaw Research Forum.
The largest developments delivered to the market were Green Corner (24,500 sqm) and Business Garden, with its two buildings totaling 22,000 sqm of office space.
The vacancy rate in central locations stood at 8.8 percent compared to 8.1 percent at the end of Q3 2012. In non-central locations, the vacancy rate was also at 8.8 percent, compared to 7.8 percent in Q3 2012.
Take-up in Q4 2012 reached 153,200 sqm, which boosted the total figure for 2012 to the record level of 608,500 sqm (up by around 6 percent on 2011). That made Q4 the busiest quarter of the year for Poland's office market, according to Warsaw Research Forum.
The largest office space volumes were leased on the fringes of the city center (28 percent) and in the Upper Southern zone (27 percent).
New leases (104,800 sqm) accounted for 68 percent of all deals, with pre-lets making up over half of them (54,000 sqm). Renegotiations and extensions accounted for 23 percent of all transactions, which was a similar figure to that in Q3 2012.
The largest deal in Q4 2012 was the pre-lease signed by Frontex for 14,600 sqm in the Warsaw Spire office building being developed by Ghelamco, while Bank Ochrony Środowiska took up the entire office space at the Feniks building (8,950 sqm) developed by Europlan and delivered at the end of 2012.
According to a report by Jones Lang LaSalle, the total investment transaction volume in Poland's commercial property market stood at approximately E2.75 billion in 2012, making the country the most active market in CEE. The volume roughly equaled that of 2011, and volume is expected to be high again this year.

Karolina Kowalska