Blog

At the end of April was made the first sod of the construction of the new metro line “Mladost 1” – Business Park Sofia. The Present Mr. Rosen Plevneliev, along with the mayor of Sofia, Mrs. Yordanka Fandakova were attending the ceremony and stated that the new metro line will be 3 km long and will have three stations, serving more than 45 000 people each day. The new line of the metro will be financed by the European Union with 110 million Euros and the “Transport” program, while the municipality will invest 10 million leva.

The new line of metro will make easier the transport towards the largest office zone in the capital Sofia, where are placed the offices and headquarters of many big international and local companies. There will be yet a second metro line that will be constructed from James Bouchier Blvd to Srebarna Str. and the new Paradise Center. This second line will be 1.2 km long and will have just one metro station. According to Sofia municipality, the metro station towards the airport will be completed in 2015. Thanks to that, local and foreign business travelers will be able to reach the airport and catch their flights more easily.

The first skyscraper in the city of Sofia will bear the name Capital Fort and will offer an intriguing mixture of offices of class A, trade zones and service centers. The offices will be modern and perfectly arranged, according to all the international regulations. The building will have a total area of 32 000 sq.m. and will be 126 m high. It will have twenty-four floors of offices that will be serviced by 12 modern elevators. The modern offices will come of various sizes ranging from 80 sq.m. to 1200 sq.m. The lower building attached to the skyscraper will also offer offices of class A, according to all international standards. This lower building will have total area of 12 000 sq.m., height of 30 m and will feature six office floors, served by six elevators. The offices there will be of the open-space type and will spread over 400 to 1700 sq.m. of area.

The new office center Capital Fort will feature a two-level central lobby area with trade zones, bank offices, two conference rooms, as well as several dining places – two restaurants and three fast-food places, a pharmacy, a tour agency, a flower shop, a newspaper stand, a beauty salon and dry-cleaners. The central atrium will have four escalators that will offer fast and easy access to the offices and a pleasant environment for the visitors. The skyscraper will have several showrooms with separate entrances and second levels. In addition to the offices, there will also be a fitness center, a children’s playground area, and a winter’s garden. The underground garages will offer 670 parking lots, arranged in several zones.

The local and international companies that are operating in the capital Sofia are paying between 700 and 3000 Euros per month for their offices. Approximately 40 % of them are looking for office premises with size that varies from 150 sq.m. to 250 sq.m. At the same time 22 % of the companies required offices in Sofia that come with more than 500 sq.m. of area. There is almost no interest in the small Sofia offices with size between 30 sq.m. and 100 sq.m.

The rental sums that the companies were eager to pay for the offices they have rented in Sofia in the second half of 2012 were between 700 and 3000 Euros, which includes more than half of the companies in Sofia. They were followed by 25 % of smaller companies with a budget for office rental varying between 300 and 700 Euros. At the same time, approximately 10 % of the companies stated that they can afford to pay more than 3000 Euros for monthly rental of their office in Sofia. The interest towards the offices of class A remains high, since companies are looking for good location, easy access and extras such as parking zones. When looking to register a company and start a business in Sofia or to relocate, the companies are in demand for high-class offices.

A brand new multifunctional complex will open soon near the building of the Bulgarian National Television. The construction of San Stefano Plaza complex started in 2005 but was prolonged for various reasons. The project includes luxurious apartments, offices of the highest class, shops and garages. The construction stages of the complex were accompanied with various problems, issues by the previous owners of the site, financial difficulties and world crises. After several changes in the investors companies that stood behind the project for offices and residential units and a change in the ownership rights, currently the project on San Stefano Plaza complex is owned and arranged by the Swiss company Edelweiss, presented by Dr. Beat Schpeck.

At the end of 2012, the new owner of the project invested more than 9 million Euros in the capital of the company, a sum which was required for the construction of the complex. The sale and rental of offices, as well as of apartments and shops will start slightly before the project is completed. According to the prognoses, the new Sofia office complex and residential zone will get permission for usage in the middle of 2014.

The financial crises had its impact on the office market outside the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia. If we have to describe the offices market situation outside Sofia with one word only, this would be: frozen. The lack of interest from the business in the rest of the cities in the country led to a drop in the average sales levels of the offices. Nowadays, an office in a nice building that is not placed in Sofia city is below 850 Euro per square meter. According to the brokers from the real estate agencies, this is so because of the lack of companies and investors who are willing to buy or rent such office premises. Behind the bad results stays the poor economics of the country, which has no increase in the last few years and that prevents the business from making investments.

The cities that still evoke the interest of the companies when it comes to rental of offices and apartments are Plovdiv and Varna. These are the two biggest cities in the country after the capital Sofia. There are a few office buildings there, but the interest is not as it should be and the demand is not serious. A rumor goes, according to which certain outsourcing companies will enter the country but will settle in the cities of Varna and Plovdiv, rather than in Sofia. One big outsourcing company from German already moved its offices to Plovdiv. Even so, the investors who are heading towards Sofia are looking for rental premises of around 300 sq.m, while those in Varna for example are looking for much smaller offices around 50-60 sq.m. The real estate specialists say that the office market outside Sofia will improve once the entire economics in the country faces better times.