Market Research 

The office of the future will be more flexible

MBL’s office team together with Sterling Serviced Offices Group conducted a survey amongst 100 office occupiers in Sofia in attempt to understand the effect of Covid-19 on business operations during the lockdown and whether their vision for the office spaces had changed.

The Bulgarian office space market remains stable during state of emergency

MBL conducted a survey among 85 landlords in Sofia whereas overall results indicate that there is a level of comfort among experienced developers with sustainable office buildings.

Despite the covid-19 crisis only 4% of respondants will postpone paying loan principal and 65% specify that they do not expect to lower rents. This indicates both healthy levels of leverage and sustainable rental income based on strong tenant roaster.

73% of the participants have noted that the shortest rental agreement in their buildings will be 5 years while 22% have indicated that they will accept a 3-year agreement. As for the changes requested by tenants – 71 % asked for deferred rental payments.

The COVID-19 pandemic affects the way we use office buildings and will likely affect how we design them in the future. We have prepared this special report with focus on measures that landlords and occupiers should consider before employees return to their workplaces.

In H1 2019, building permits for TBA of 788,000 sq. m. were issued, while the construction starts were 454,000 sq. m.

In Q2 2019, the average price for sq. m. in Sofia was €1,054 per sq. m. for newly built dwellings and €1,086 for existing dwellings compared to €955 and €1,077 respectively, as of Q4 2018.

Housing affordability index increased from 167 in Q4 2018 to 177 in Q2 2019

The area around Paradise Center is the most preferred by the office occupiers in Sofia

In 2019 MBL conducted a survey among 100 companies which are tenants of class A and class B office space in Sofia. Our team interviewed employers with approximate headcount of 22,000 and total footprint of 274,000 sq.m. office space, 63 % of which represents class A space. With 76 % international companies are predominant for this survey and the main part is taken by the representatives from the IT and BPO sector.