108 Agency: Industrial vacancy rises to 5%

Czech industrial vacancy levels climbed to 5 percent in the first quarter of 2020, but the 108 Agency study that revealed the numbers claims this has nothing to do with the pandemic. Instead, it's the growing appetite by developers to build speculative space that was still prevalent before Covid-19 reached Europe. And while a good deal of production had to be shut down during the height of the crisis, e-shops have blossomed and logistics real estate appears to have emerged from the health scare as one of the winners. "The Czech industrial market benefited from economic growth and strong demand," said Michal Bílý, an analyst at 108 Agency. "Thanks to speculative construction, vacancy in prime industrial space reached its five-year maximum of 5 percent (438,000 sqm) in the first quarter of 2020. He said that from a regional perspective, the Karlove Vary and Ústí regions had the largest portion of empty space (16 percent) while the Pardubice region had 15 percent vacancy. On the opposite side of the spectrum are the Liberec, Zlín and Southern Bohemia regions where there is essentially no empty space to be found.