Office rents in Bulgaria retreat to 2006 levels
30 September 2009
Office rental prices in Bulgaria have dropped to their 2006 levels, according to a survey by property consultancy Colliers.
Top-quality offices on major thoroughfares are rented for 14 to 15 euro a sq m, or the same as rentals in the two landmark schemes, Serdika Offices and European Retail Centre, due to open in 2010, Colliers office space manager Anton Slavchev said.
The sharp decline in occupancy would fuel oversupply in 2009 and 2010, pressing prices down, Colliers said.
Office inventory in the capital city Sofia totalled 965 000 sq m as at July 1, with a further 864 000 sq m currently under construction and a further 250 000 sq m due to pop up by the end of 2009.
At the same time, office vacancies added up to 13.4 per cent at July 1, reaching up to 20 per cent at the city's fringe with more empty offices expected to come in the future, Slavchev said.
Still, European Retail Centre CEO Tanya Koseva-Bashova is upbeat that demand will pick up in the second half of 2010.
The retail section of Serdika Centre, a 210 million euro investment by Austrian developer Sparkassen Immobilien AG, will open in the spring and the office section will open in the autumn, board member Friedrich Wachernig said. The project features 200 stores, including a Piccadilly hypermarket, on a three-level space of 52 000 sq m, of which 85 per cent already has tenants.
On September 29 2009, the investor invited potential tenants for its 32 000 sq m offices, with pharmaceutical, energy and consultancy firms showing brisk interest.
Sparkassen Immobilien plans another project in downtown Sofia – an office building of 10 000 sq m.
Despite the downturn, the Austrian company boosted assets to 1.85 billion euro in the first half of 2009 from 1.66 billion euro in the same period of 2008.
In a sign that investment climate in Bulgaria is improving, Israeli investor BSR Sofia is breaking ground on September 30 2009 on its 20 million euro business park Sofia 1 in Slatina district, said Plamen Andreev, manager of local Planex Holding, which was hired to build the 36 000 sq m park.
Source: Dnevnik.bg
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