The medical field has surpassed the IT&C field as a share among the tenants of office space in 2021, on the Bucharest market

Medical and pharmaceutical companies rented the largest area of offices, for medical clinics, hospitals or headquarters in the first nine months of 2021, about 23% of the total market, exceeding the share of IT & C companies (which accumulated 22%).

Among the medical and pharmaceutical companies that have rented new spaces this year are: Victoria Medical Center, Ares Center of Excellence, Trident Clinic, Provita Hospital, Medicover Hospital, PMEC Medical Equipment Center, Alcon and Astellas.

They chose office buildings such as Global Business Center, Empire Tower, Herastrau Office Building, Iride Business Park, Multigalaxy Building, Green Court and One Tower.

"At the end of 2019, before entering the pandemic period, 50% of the total office space rented in Bucharest was for the employees of IT&C companies, this field occupying the first place detached in the share of tenants. In the first three quarters of this year, the IT&C field was surpassed for the first time by the medical field, the demand for such spaces increasing substantially. The health crisis generated by the COVID 19 pandemic has created the need for more medical services and products and we believe that this is seen in the increasing share of demand from medical companies. At the same time, the need to work from home due to health risk has led many IT companies to adopt hybrid work, so plans to relocate or expand office space have been postponed. However, we believe that there will be relocations among IT companies in 2022-2023, when the pandemic will decrease significantly in intensity, to provide employees with office space adapted for hybrid work and in buildings that have implemented measures to reduce the risks generated by COVID 19", Says Alexandru Petrescu, Managing Partner at ESOP Consulting l CORFAC International.

Before the pandemic, in the last three years, between 2017 and 2019, the demand from IT&C, BPO and SSC companies dominated the office space rental market.

In 2020, the demand for offices for IT&C, BPO and SSC employees has decreased, and this year there is a premise to stay at the same level as last year (the volume of rented spaces is plotted by the end of the first nine months of 2021, and for previous years for 12 months).

In 2017, the engine of the office market was the IT&C, BPO and SSC segment with a share of 51% of transactions.

The next important segment was Finance, Banking, Insurance with a share of 16%, while areas such as Construction and Real Estate, FMCG or Media Marketing had shares between 3 and 5%.

And in 2018 most of the space requests came from the IT&C, BPO and SSC segment with a share of 36% of transactions.

However, the Constructions & Real Estate segment was the star of that year, having a significant increase compared to 2017 due to the entry on the market of new shared-office operators that have pre-leased important areas.

In 2019, the IT&C, BPO and SSC segment increased again, with most space requests coming from companies of this type, with a total of 50% of transactions.

The Finance, Banking and Insurance segment had an important share, occupying 17% of the leased area in Bucharest. The field of Constructions and real estate was still active, with 8% of the demand, here usually being included companies that rent office space and rearrange them, in order to sub-rent them in shared-offices regime.

In 2020, the IT&C, BPO and SSC segment narrowed in volume, but also in share in total transactions, falling from half to one third of total transactions.

On the rise, there were companies in the fields of Professional Services, with 16% of the leased area and Financial - by 14%, and the field of Medical and Pharmaceutical began to rise slowly, slowly, at the end of the year already accumulating 10% of the area traded in Bucharest . In 2020, however, the demand from investors in shared-office spaces almost disappeared.

In 2021, in the first part of the year, the demand from IT&C companies was shoulder to shoulder with the companies in the medical field, in the second part of the year being exceeded by a percentage.

As a prospect, the Medical field will remain important on the market of demand for new spaces, due to the greater need for medical services, in the current epidemiological context.

In 2021, the field of Finance, Banking and Insurance remained the same and the shared-offices companies, in the field of Real Estate and Construction, slowly returned.