Lockdown slows office market

Portugal’s office market has been sluggish in terms of take-up so far this year because of the second lockdown.

January was very slow, with an occupation activity of around 2,000m2 in Lisbon and 500m2 in Porto according to the Office Flashpoint report from consultants JLL.
Lisbon saw a fall of 79% on the 14,000m2 transacted in January last year, while Porto suffered a fall of 94% on the 7,500m2 occupied in January last year.
Mariana Rosa, Head of Leasing Markets Advisory of JLL says, “This behaviour is down to the new general lockdown, which forced office workers into teleworking and meant that companies once again were forced to put off decisions regarding their office requirements.”
Mariana Rosa also says that January should not be seen as a weather vane or taste of things to come for the rest of the year since “as we saw through 2020, demand continued to exist. When the pandemic began to provide conditions for work to get back to some measure of normality, office take-up bounced back”.
There were five operations in Lisbon in January, one of them with an area of over 1,000m2. The average area per operation was 400m2. The market was most active in I Zone – CBD (67%) occupation), dominated by the Services and Companies sector (68% occupation)
In Porto, the 500m2 take-up resulted from three operations, with the average space being 160m2. The largest operation of the month was registered in zone 4 – eastern, which was responsible for 54% of the monthly activity. In terms of sector demand, the month was most dynamic for consultants and lawyers.