“Regional cities grew strongly in recent years, with a significant stock of new Class A buildings and tenants accustomed to a high standard of quality and efficiency, who want their teams in Cluj, Timisoara, or Brasov to have the same quality of service and office space as teams in Bucharest, Warsaw, Paris, London, etc. Thus, the competition for quality of service and efficiency is not local, but rather regional or even global. These comfort components matter at the moment, especially as each company tries to maintain or improve its team spirit, and therefore its office work, even in the new paradigm of 2-3 remote working days per week. Equally, multinationals expanding outside the capital’s labor market also want to maintain the standard they offer their employees. This way, the office is no longer just a workspace, but a destination, an experience, where the quality of services, the location, the mix of services in the area and in the building, the development of a community are essential elements for increasing the use of space and increasing productivity,” explains Alexandru Atanasiu, Deputy Head | Property Management & Construction Services at Colliers Romania.
Contracting Property Management services underlines the professional approach that developers and owners of office and industrial space take towards their tenants, generating savings and benefits such as a significant contribution to the implementation of environmental, social and governance (ESG) commitments, as well as the integration of optimized software and applications and unified reporting on the financial situation in conjunction with the operational situation on site.
“The trend observed in regional cities such as Cluj-Napoca and Timisoara, where there are over 730,000 square meters of space in Class A and B office buildings, shows the increasing need of landlords for a professional property management provider, coming with very good services and lower costs than in-house management. The way we do business generates significant savings for companies that have chosen to outsource their property management to us, given the team’s expertise, the skills and experience we have built up over 12 years in the business, the procedures we have developed, the implementation of best practices, both locally and regionally, and our IT systems”, adds Alexandru Atanasiu.
In Cluj-Napoca and Timisoara, cities where Colliers manages almost 100,000 square meters of office and industrial space, companies predominantly in the IT&C, professional services, manufacturing and energy sectors have chosen to outsource their property management.
Colliers’ Property Management division takes a multi-disciplinary approach to each project, covering a wide range of activities through the services it offers. Specifically, it provides operational and technical management of buildings, while meeting the needs of tenants and ensuring they meet their contractual obligations. At the same time, the company also provides financial services for management (invoicing, payments, expenses and income, reconciliations) as well as reporting to landlords, ensuring the operational link between the needs of tenants and landlords.
Last year, Colliers increased its portfolio of managed properties by 135,000 square metres in 5 new office projects, bringing its total portfolio to 680,000 square metres. Currently, the company has a total of around 400 tenants in the buildings it manages in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timisoara, Brasov and Arad, and the value of the properties in its portfolio exceeds 1 billion euro.
“We are seeing a mature local property management market. Ten years ago, Romania was starting to accumulate a stock of high-tech and efficient Class A office buildings, and these buildings needed qualified staff for operation and efficiency. We began training and specializing our property managers through programs that focused on a detailed understanding of operational, technical and especially commercial elements, as well as on customer service and the development of activities and IT systems to make the business more efficient. This makes us ready to further strengthen our position as market leader in property management office services and to increase our presence in regional cities. More and more institutional/foreign companies that are buying or looking to buy commercial projects in regional cities also want to receive the same quality of PM services as in Bucharest”, observes Oana Adjudeanu, Deputy Head | Property Management & Construction Services at Colliers Romania.
