Close to 30% of the respondents represent companies with more than 1,000 employees, having a big „say” on the current office environment.
While 55% of respondents witnessed negative or somewhat negative impact over their business due to Covid-19, 16% of them are experiencing „business as usual” so far.
Looking ahead, most of the market agrees that the activity will be negatively impacted in the next 3 - 9 months. While approx. 50% of the respondents have limited clarity regarding the outbreak’s effect on their operations on a longer period (more than 9 months), 16% of them expect to experience business as usual by the year end.
With a majority of respondents looking at business recovery starting with 2021, 34% of the interviewed companies expect it to occur starting with the second half of this year.
70% of the respondents expect a decreasing trend in rents as a consequence of the covid-19 outbreak, out of which 23% expect a major correction. 20% do not see the rents changing at all. None of the interviewed tenants expects an increase in rents going forward.
While 92% the respondents expect to return as soon as mid –late Q2 or early Q3 2020, the remaining 8% expects to be able to return as late as early Q4 2020. While a quarter of the respondents does not have yet a clear picture of how Covid-19 outbreak will affect the number of employees, 40% expect no change in the number of employees and approx 17% estimates increase while 15% estimates decreases.
Only 9% of the respondents expect a smaller impact compared the previous downturn and together with the ones that expect a similar impact make up approx. 25% of the answers. The remaining 3 quarters expect a bigger (48%) or a considerable bigger (27%) impact over their businesses. This, combined with the majority of respondents’ opinion that things will improve in 2021 leads to the silver lining, that we are looking at a V-shaped recovery. (source: Colliers)
