Page 61 - UKRRptMay21

9.1.4 Construction & Real estate sector news
Kyiv’s office vacancy rate doubled last year, to 11%, the highest level since 2014. In turn, rents fell by 10 to 20%, reported the Kyiv Post. 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.
The residential real estate market in Ukraine’s capital is picking up 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.
Ukraine ranked second worldwide for projects undertaken by Turkish construction companies in 2020, said Burak Pehlivan, the Chairman of the International Turkish-Ukrainian Business Association, (Kyiv Post). Boosted by the Zelenskiy government’s ‘Big Construction’ program, Turkish companies have undertaken 2000 construction projects worth more than $7bn since the 1990s. In 2020, a year of reduced cross border investment, Turkey was the largest source of new foreign investment, investing $400mn in Ukraine.
61 UKRAINE Country Report May 2021 www.intellinews.com