Comment:

Jan Babka, Head of Office Leasing Department, Knight Frank:

"The situation on the Prague office market remains more or less stable as in previous quarters. ,Tenants prefer to extend their contracts rather than move to new offices. Most companies wait and make their premises more efficient, they also negotiate flexibility so that they can react more quickly to possible changes in the market. The trend of moving from peripheral office hubs closer to the center still persists for some companies. They are thus trying to attract the workforce back to the offices with an attractive location and new premises."

Introduction

Prague Research Forum (PRF) publishes data on the office space market for the first quarter of 2024. PRF members are CBRE, Colliers, Cushman & Wakefield, iO Partners, Knight Frank and Savills, which share basic information about the office market in Prague in order to providing the most complete, accurate and transparent data about its development as possible.

The activities of the Prague Research Forum are supported by the RICS institution.

Offer of office buildings

The total size of office space in Prague is 3.9 million m2. In the first quarter, one office building was completed - Roztyly Plaza (21,700 m2) in Prague 4. In the same period, the construction of the PernerKa project (9,300 m2) in Prague 8 also started, this is the first new construction started since the second quarter of 2022. currently under construction is 71,300 m2, of which 82% will be completed this year. Thus, 80,300 m2 should be delivered to the market in 2024, which is 18% less than in 2023 and well below the long-term average.

Most of the existing modern office supply (74%) is class A buildings, while the share of the highest quality AAA-rated premises in the total volume of office space reaches 20%.

Realized demand

Total gross realized demand (including renewed contracts – so-called renegotiations – and subleases) reached
in the first quarter of 2024 a total of 108,700 m2, which represents a decrease of 35% quarter-on-quarter. Compared to the same period of the previous year, this is a 19% decrease.

Net realized demand reached 46,000 m2, 38% less than the same period last year and 25% less than the previous quarter.

Renewals of existing contracts (so-called renegotiations) had the largest share of 57% in the total realized gross demand. New leases and expansions in existing buildings accounted for 38% of total gross realized demand, while pre-leasing of new offices under construction accounted for only 4%. The remaining 1% was made up of subleases of already rented premises.

The highest gross realized demand was recorded in the first quarter in Prague 4 (27%), followed by Prague 8 (25%) and Prague 1 (16%). The greatest demand for offices was realized by technology companies (17%) and companies from the financial sector (13%).

Significant leases

Among the most significant transactions of the first quarter of 2024, we include Trinity Bank in Trinity Palace in Prague 1, of which it is also the owner (7,600 m2), as well as the renewal of the existing lease and the expansion of Grant Thornton in the Parkview building (5,000 m2) in Prague 4 and the extension of the existing of the Mattoni 1873 contract in the myhive Palmovka 4 building (3,800 m2) in Prague 8.

Fraction of vacant area and net absorption

Net absorption expresses the change in occupied office space on the market over the given period. Compared to the previous quarter, occupied office space increased by 8,900 m2.

Office vacancy in the first quarter of this year increased slightly by 30 basis points quarter-on-quarter to the current 7.5%, the vacancy rate was unchanged year-on-year. The total area of vacant offices reached 292,000 m2. The most available spaces were in Prague 4 (65,900 m2) and in Prague 5 (60,700 m2). On the contrary, the least vacant area was in Prague 2 (5,600 m2) and in Prague 10 (6,400 m2), which, however, belong to small markets in terms of the total volume of offices. In percentage terms, the highest vacancy rate was in Prague 3 (19.8%) and Prague 7 (13.2%), the lowest in Prague 8 (3.0%) and Prague 10 (4.2%).

Rent

The highest achieved rents in the first quarter of this year rose slightly to 27.50-28.00 euros per m2 per month in the city center, 18.00-19.00 euros per m2 per month in the interior and 15.50-16.00 euros per m2 per month in the outer parts of the city.