RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – After a wave of office repossessions in the wake of the home office last year, a wave of new companies is slowly starting to occupy these spaces, giving a new physiognomy to corporate buildings that used to have a “traditional” profile, with bays, closed and meeting rooms.
This change process, led by companies that grew in the midst of the crisis, such as technology, healthcare, and financial advisory companies, is encouraging the sector, which is counting on this to try and reduce the so-called vacancy rate.
The initial estimate of specialists is that the percentage of buildings without tenants may exceed 20% by the end of this year in São Paulo alone, twice as high as in the pre-pandemic period. There is another problem insight: the arrival of new buildings that will be ready by 2021.
A survey by ‘Buildings’, a real estate research company focused on the commercial real estate segment, shows that 31 new buildings will soon be incorporated into São Paulo’s market. There will be 352,000 square meters of class A retail space for rent or sale in terms of square footage, compared to 220,000 square meters in 2020 – an increase of 60%.
“The decision to build these office buildings was made about three years ago when there was an indication that the vacancy rate was falling,” says the partner-director of ‘Buildings’, Fernando Didziakas.
According to him, the solution may lie in the companies that are making growth plans. “In the pandemic, companies managed to adapt to the home office, but this, in the long run, is not going to be sustainable. Companies will continue to need physical spaces, but the pickup may come from new companies coming to market and those that are growing.”
A sign of this is what happened in one of the buildings delivered at the beginning of the year, the B32, located in the Itaim neighborhood in São Paulo. It was delivered with 60% of its floors rented, mostly to technology companies.
Facebook alone has reserved space equivalent to 30% of the building. The e-commerce company Shopee, with headquarters in Singapore and which saw its business expand rapidly in Brazil in the middle of the pandemic, had rented a space of 4,000 square meters. Now, it is already planning its expansion, a source told Estadão newspaper.
In another move, fintech company Creditas also keeps expanding its space near the Marginal Pinheiros. The shake-up in the market also involves bank executives and investment managers starting to spin off solo projects and need physical space for their activities.
Health
Responsible for Research and Market Intelligence at Cushman & Wakefield, Jadson Andrade also mentions companies in the insurance, energy, and health care sectors. In the latter case, Andrade comments that some companies resort to corporate buildings to set up clinics and even hospitals when they can make the necessary adaptations. Prevent Senior, for example, last year rented a corporate building on Avenida Brigadeiro Luís Antônio to build a hospital. It also kept the old building where Fnac used to be, in Pinheiros, and another one on Marginal.
“The offices are beginning to be adapted to the new reality and to the demands that are beginning to appear now,” says Caio Castro, partner of the real estate fund manager RBR. This adaptation has been through the greater spacing between work points and interaction areas, which has been proving necessary after the exhaustion of working at home 100% of the time.
The information is from the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo.
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