“We do however expect the total volume in 2015 to be lower than 2014 figures, with early expectations between 800 million euro – 1 billion euro, based on the fact that a number of key office and industrial buildings within Romania are expected to transact this year,” JLL said in its Q1 Bucharest City Report.
In the first quarter, the real estate investment volume in Romania amounted to just over 20 million euro, generated by two big deals – Heitman sold Mercury Logistics Park near Bucharest to Czech real estate developer CTP for 10 million euro, and Spanish real estate company Riofisa sold Civis Center Brasov&Timisoara, in the western city of Timisoara, to Romanian-based Tiriac Imobiliare for another 10 million.
A total of five real office buildings are scheduled to be delivered this year in Bucharest. City Offices, with an area of 27,000 sq m, was delivered in the first quarter. Green Court Building B and George Enescu OB are scheduled for delivery in the second quarter, Sema Park New Office 3 in the third quarter and AFI Park 4&5 in the fourth quarter.
Due to the increasing volume of future deliveries, JLL expects that the vacancy rate on the office segment will marginally increase by the beginning of 2016 from 13.4% at present.
On the retail segment, the first quarter saw no new openings in Bucharest.
For 2015, a total of five retail projects are in the pipeline in Romania, including Pipera Plaza and Mega Mall in Bucharest and three malls in Constanta, Deva and Turnu Severin.
On the industrial segment, no new space was delivered in Q1, but close to 247,000 sq m are expected to be delivered in Romania by the end of the year. Globalworth plans to extend Timisoara Airport Park with close to 52,000 sq m, while Olympian Timisoara will be extended with 20,000 sq m for TT Electronics.
Other projects which will add new space to the market are Yazaki Braila, Ploiesti West Park, VGP Timisoara, WDP Ploiesti, CTP Turda and Transilvania Logistic Park Cluj. In Bucharest, only 2 new speculative projects are expected to be finished by the end of 2015: the 75,000 sq m extension of P3 Logistic Park and the new 45,000 sq m Log Center Mogosoaia.