Tags: business properties

During the second half of last year the supply of modern office premises in Sofia grew by over 12%. This gave grounds for the real estate agents specializing in the rental and sale of offices in commercial buildings, to make prognoses for an increased interest in quality commercial and business properties in year 2012. According to the expectations of the agents, the greatest will be the interest shown by companies that are working in the spheres of Internet technology and those working in the pharmaceutical sector. In other words, the companies will search for new and modern offices for their business will be mainly from those sectors that are not affected by...

According to the prognosis of the realtors, the real estate market in 2012 will be more active if renting and purchasing of offices in the new and luxurious office buildings in the capital is concerned. Moreover, the professionals are optimistic that the city of Sofia will attract the solid investors from UK, USA and Greece, while there will also be an increased interest from established investors in Bulgaria. The analyses of the people who work in that sphere shows that these investors are willing to take higher risks, or wish to purchase office buildings under construction and to provide for their subsequent completion and rental.

Over the past few months the building companies in the capital were occupied mainly by finding new tenants for the existing office buildings and business centers they have built, rather than making new investments. In other words, the trend that is clearly seen is for a slow pace market when office construction is concerned and a focus on the newly established office areas in Sofia. However, the capital remains the main city for the large office projects and continues to be a preferred destination for the big foreign companies who now enter the Bulgarian market.

Currently in the city of Sofia could be found more than 330 000 sq.m of offices available for rent. Among the office buildings there are some business centers which can not find long term tenants because of their poor location or lack of parking spaces. At the same time there is a strong interest in green offices and the high quality offices, which have provoked the interested of the international companies that have entered the Bulgarian business market. That is why the vacant offices of the highest class A are not many. This creates a niche for building of Class A office building projects, that are expected to be easily rented or purchased in the near future....

The city of Sofia is among the European capitals with the greatest number of available offices of the highest class A. In the last year 2011, the rental levels of the offices have been stable. The same tendency could be seen at the office markets in Central and Western Europe, as well as in Russia. The office markets in Moscow and London have faced an increase in the rental levels of approximately ten per cent, while the office markets in Sofia, Athens and Dubai has underwent a decrease of eight per cent. The reasons for that for the city of Sofia is not the lack of interest but the increased number of offices available for rent. The tendencies for Sofia city a...

The offices in the Sofia business centers offer stable rental levels. The prices of the office premises of the prestigious class "A" cost about 12 euros per square meter for rent, while those of class "B" cost approximately 8 Euros per square meter. There are many companies that are trying to renegotiate and thus to reduce the level of their rent. There are also companies that benefit from lower prices and move from lower to higher class offices, mainly in the offices of the class "A" type. The available offices in the capital are about 25%.

For some time now, the offices in Sofia are in the focus of interest of the major outsourcing companies. These companies provide many new jobs in Bulgaria, and are renting a great part of the office space in the capital. The large companies usually register companies according to the requirements of the local laws, and thus step on the local market. They often create new job positions by taking advantage of the difference in the levels of wages in Sofia and those in the more developed economies. This, of course, is very good for the office market in Sofia at a time when most Bulgarian companies are shrinking their consumption and staff and transfer to smaller o...

Now that the deadline for the company re-registration in Bulgaria is near, many company owners in the country should act quickly and arrange that procedure. Otherwise, they will have serious troubles with the ownership of their properties. All the companies, which are not included in this new online register according to the regulations of the Trade Register Law, shall be removed from the register of companies in the country. This will also result in a loss of the company assets, which includes properties as well. This is so, because the companies that have not went through the re-registration process shall be blocked and will not be able to sell their properties.  

The sale of offices in Sofia has been very peaceful in the first nine months of the year, even though the supply was serious. The prices however remained high and no actual discounts were made by the owners and developers, with the biggest reduction being ten percent. Even with these price discounts, the offices kept their prices of 1500 Euro/sq.m, to even more than 2000 Euros/sq.m for the class A office buildings. As a result there were almost no deals for sale of offices in the current year, which comes to show that the prices asked for are not realistic. The main driving factor for that sphere of Sofia offices is the price.