Despina Ponomarenco, Bucharest Real Estate Club: “Tenants are looking for a controlled environment, a safe space to work”

“Bucharest Real Estate Club promotes new business opportunities and militates for attracting new investors on the Romanian market. We have 50 members and in November we celebrate 4 years since its establishment. We meet today in an online format, but we also have encouraging news. Statistics show that Romania has reached a degree of vaccination of 40 percent with the first dose. It is almost two years since the beginning of the pandemic, a period in which the real estate market did not stop, and investments and transactions continued,” Despina Ponomarenco, President, Bucharest Real Estate Club said during Real Estate Forum 2021 organized by The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“Tenants are looking for a controlled environment, a safe space to work. Investments and transactions did not stop during this pandemic period. We noticed the importance of adapting companies to the work environment, a maturity of decisions by companies.

IT&C and BPO remain a major player in the office market. Many companies have renewed their contracts but have also expanded. We will never see such large offices in one building. We will probably see smaller spaces in more buildings, possibly divided in several cities of the country.

The industrial and logistics space sector is in full development at the beginning of 2020, and the pandemic context has determined investors to press the accelerator pedal in this direction. At the beginning of 2020, the national stock of logistics spaces was less than 4 million square meters, and at this time in 2021 we exceeded the 5.5 million mark with a vacancy rate of 7-8 percent.”

Full recording of the event here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzVEjyAQc3Q