Skanska breaks office leasing record
Office & mixed-use developmentThe Swedish developer began the construction of seven projects in Poland and sold five buildings for PLN 1.2 bln (compared to sales worth PLN 650 mln in 2016). Skanska Property Poland has currently 170,000 sqm of office space under construction and is planning to start work on further projects. “We are very pleased, that our strategy, which we adopted a couple of years ago, is now bringing great results. We have bought some of the best sites and we are preparing fantastic projects with some of the best Polish design studios. We work on the basis of a very transparent and unique business model. All this makes our buildings very interesting for both tenants and investors. And what is most important is that our business partners come back to us very willingly,” says Arkadiusz Rudzki, the managing director of Skanska Property Poland . “We are currently developing ten buildings and we still have plans for more in both regional markets and in Warsaw [...]. With our long-term strategy we have secured a portfolio of some of the best land plots and this will allow us to plan new projects for the next five to seven years, practically across all the markets on which we currently operate,” he adds.
“The market is red-hot. We don’t have to deal with a tenant market anymore. The competition for well-located space is so great, that often a number of companies try to take up the same storeys in one building. Additionally, more and more often big tenants are competing with each other at an early stage of a development to secure an appropriate space for them to relocate to and for future development. In many cases companies are consolidating their offices and operations in one location,” says Ewelina Kałużna, the leasing and asset management director at Skanska Property Poland.
The developer has also announced that it is to start a number of new office projects in 2018, including its first project in the Tricity (on ul. Grunwaldzka in Gdańsk). It is also planning to buy land in all the cities where it currently operates. The company has recently reorganised its structure to be better able to follow market demand and it has divided itself into two regional teams, with one that is responsible for the northern region including Warsaw, Łódź and the Tricity and another for the southern region including Wrocław, Kraków, Katowice, and Poznań. Skanska, together with Saule Technologies, wants to cover its façades with perovskite solar cells using an ink-jet printing method, which was invented by Polish scientist Olga Malinkiewicz.
Skanska’s office division is present in four CEE markets, including Poland, Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary. In the entire region the company leased almost 145,000 sqm of office space (10 pct increase over 2016). The company sold seven buildings for over EUR 360 mln and had 350,000 sqm under construction at a time in 17 ongoing project. By the end of the year the company delivered five projects with a total of almost 86,000 sqm. Acquired land plots secured another potential 315,000 sqm to the company’s land bank in all four CEE countries.
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