Lots of the investors betting on the Romanian industry recovery remained with huge undeveloped plots of land, generating annual losses. More than 1,200 ha of land were bought in the outskirts of the big cities for the construction of industrial and logistic spaces, but during the last years almost nothing was constructed.
Just to speak about Bucharest, there are approx. 140,000 sqm industrial spaces without tenants and in cities as Timişoara, Arad or Ploieşti, the un-occupancy rate reached 13-15%, according to DTZ Echinox. The sector is practically not moving, as the available area is similar to last year’s, as few projects were delivered and the absorption rate of the built areas is extremely low.
Romanian market’s potential has determined a series of investors to build speculatively, without a real request for the developments, but the crises stopped their enthusiasm, facing huge un-occupied areas.
„Considering that there is no speculative development and we do not forecast these types of constructions for the next two years, we can estimate a decrease of the industrial spaces rate. The decrease will be though slow, being balanced by the growth of the industrial stock with building at request. “, explains Irina Iliescu, the head of the industrial department within Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL).
As far as the company is informed, „there weren’t any speculative industrial constructions and there will not be any for 2013“. This situation occurs as the financing is expensive and is offered for build-to-suit buildings, therefore based on a pre-lease or pre-sale contract.
In the first term of this year approx. 149,000 sqm industrial spaces were rented, with 53% the transactions in Bucharest. In this period, Carrefour renewed its lease contract for 45,000 sqm in Europolis Park and Elit Romania signed a new contract for 9,000 sqm in the same logistic park. If in the first quarter the share of the renewals was 71% of the total area absorbed by the market in the last three months this type of transactions decreased to 47%, favouring the built-to-suit contracts – increasing from 6% to 23% and the new contracts – increasing from 23% to 30%. The level of rents remained constant in the last six months, around EUR 4/sqm/month, decreasing to EUR 3.5/sqm/month for the spaces below 20,000 sqm.
In conclusion, without investors risking the development of new industrial spaces, this sector will remain with the stock developed before the crises. Practically, in the last five years only 100,000 sqm of new spaces were developed in Bucharest, from a total of 900,000 sqm estimated by the end of 2013. Until re-launch of request, which is less probable to happen on short term, the investors will remain prudent regarding new projects development. (source: capital.ro)
