Gross take-up of warehouses in the Kyiv market in January-March 2020 grew by 15% year-over-year, to 28,800 square meters, according to a survey of Cushman & Wakefield Ukraine. “According to our experts, in the first quarter of 2020, the net take-up in the segment was negative and amounted to approximately minus 40,800 square meters, which is mainly due to a change in the rental strategy of the owners of several facilities in the period before the spread of COVID-19,” Head of Research and Development Consultancy at Cushman & Wakefield Ukraine Marta Kostiuk.
According to the company, preliminary leases amounted to 85% of the total volume of transactions in the first quarter.
Since the beginning of the year, there was no new offer on the warehouse real estate market of Kyiv. However, by the end of 2020, two facilities with a total area of 60,000 square meters will go live.
According to the survey, the primary vacancy of warehouses in March 2020 increased 2.1 percentage points compared to the end of 2019 and amounted to 2.9%. Moreover, the occupancy rate of the facilities planned for launch this year is already 40-100%, the company said.
Base rental rates for high-quality class A warehouses in Kyiv and its suburbs remained at $4-5.8 per sq. m. a month, and class B $3.2-3.8 per sq. m. a month.
“Given the growing risks associated with the economic slowdown amid the spread of COVID-19, from the second half of March 2020, a number of tenants in the warehouse and logistics real estate market in Kyiv and its suburbs initiated negotiations with lessors in order to minimize their rental costs,” Kostiuk said, clarifying that the provision of preferential conditions for tenants is individual in nature and is not a trend.
