Page 15 - UKRRptJun21

And the growth is not limited to the capital. The volume of housing construction in some regions of Ukraine increased by 10-20% in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the fourth quarter of 2020, General Director of the Finance and Investment Management Association (FIMA) Viktoria Volkovska told Interfax-Ukraine in April.
"We have analysed dozens of housing objects working with the Construction Financing Funds. There is an increase in activity in all regions, the most noticeable in Lviv region, where the volume of construction work increased by more than 20%," she said.
According to the survey, 40% of respondents reported an increase in the volume of construction work of more than 20%, some 10% of respondents noted 20% growth, and 20% – about 10% growth. Only 10% of respondents reported a drop to 10%.
Office still in the doldrums
For the moment the focus is on the residential sector where with demand up 8% in March year-on-year and 81% of total demand made up in the primary market, reports Address.ua as cited by Interfax Ukraine on April 15.
"Due to the successful completion of 2020 for most developers, the primary real estate market has noticeably revived in the first quarter of 2021, sales were opened in ten new residential complexes, seven of them in March. Demand also remains quite stable: in March, the number of requests for apartment search decreased by 8% after the high activity of buyers in January-February, but the total volume remains high," Director of City Development Solutions Roman Herasymchuk said as cited by the newswire.
The office market remains moribund with vacancy rates doubling last year to 11%, the highest level since 2014, reports the Kyiv Post. Rents for office space also fell by 10-20%.
Faced with uncertainty in the pandemic year, CBRE Ukraine said that developers offered only 125,000 square meters of new office space — half the initial plan. This year, Cushman & Wakefield has predicted that 160,000 square meters in new office space will come on the market in Kyiv. Total current supply is 2mn square meters.
Warehousing driven by e-commerce boom
As elsewhere in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) the warehousing subsector is something of a special case as it is enjoying the added tailwind of the booming e-commerce sector that has actually benefited from the pandemic.
The e-commerce boom pushed Kyiv warehouse vacancy rates down from 30% to 2%, according to a Cushman & Wakefield. Although 85,000 square meters of new space were commissioned last year, rates have increased to $5.5 per square meter. “It is not enough to satisfy existing occupier demand,” said the report. This year, an additional 60,000 square meters are pipeline for 2021.
At the same time the prospects of strong growth for the next few years has finally attracted some of the multinational retailers to set up shop in Ukraine
15 UKRAINE Country Report XXXX 2018 www.intellinews.com