The office vacancy rate was 7.5 percent in the first quarter. "The good news is that, after a longer period, newly launched speculative projects also appeared, which means the definitive end of the imaginary dry period in office development," believes Colliers analyst Josef Stanko. In recent years, offices were built mainly for specific future tenants, while developers did not engage in speculative construction - i.e. without pre-contracted tenants. This year, for example, he started the construction of a multifunctional building with offices and apartments Passerinvest in Brumlovka, the administrative projects PernerKa and Nový Rohan in Prague 8 also started construction.
More expensive, but more attractive
It is much more expensive to build an office building now than it used to be. For example, according to the real estate consulting company Prochazka & Partners, interiors cost twice as much as before covid. Gone are the days of large open spaces, today's top offices are more structured and offer different meeting places, informal meetings and soundproofed places for phone calls or video meetings. And of course that costs money. "Companies are trying to get employees back to the workplace and are trying to build beautiful offices to lure them there," says Radek Procházka, managing partner of the consulting firm. According to him, the faster development of office quality is pushed, among other things, by ESG requirements, which will force domestic companies to prove their climate and social sustainability in the coming years. Their offices will thus have to be ecological, sustainable and economical.
This spring, for example, Škoda Auto employees moved to the newly completed offices in Mladá Boleslav. "The reason for building the company's new headquarters was mainly the effort to functionally consolidate the previously scattered workplaces within Mladá Boleslav," says the car company's spokesperson Ivana Povolná, according to whom the fulfillment of ESG requirements was only one of the reasons for the move. The building uses photovoltaics and other energy-saving technologies. It is similar to the Hagibor project in Prague by the development company Crestyl, where the media publishing house Czech News Center recently moved (publisher e15 - editor's note). The publishing house Economia or the startup Shoptet are planning to move into the modern Port7 project in Holešovice by Skanska Property. Across the river in Karlín, the headquarters of the arms holding Czechoslovak Group is moving into the new Red Court administrative building from the developer J&T Real Estate.
The largest domestic banks have been investing in their headquarters in recent years. After all, they will be the ones that will condition the provision of loans for the construction of buildings in the future precisely on compliance with ESG principles. While Trinity Bank bought the renovated building of the former Komerční banka in Na Příkopě Street, Česká spořitelna will have its new headquarters in Smíchov, where developer Sekyra Group is building the new Smíchov City district. According to Hospodářské noviny, the semi-state enterprise ČEZ is also negotiating with Sekyra, which would like to move its headquarters with several thousand employees, who are scattered across several rented buildings in Prague, to one place. However, according to CEZ representatives, the possible transfer will only be effective in 2028.
