Farewell, rent Russia – Newspaper Kommersant No. 144 (7345) dated 08/10/2022
Western companies that decided to abandon the Russian market managed to reimburse the ownership of office space up to 30 billion rubles. for early termination of the lease agreement in the total amount of 950 thousand square meters. m only in the next year and a half. Despite the difficulty of replacing the departed tenants, the owners of business centers may be in the black, experts say.
Early termination of lease agreements for office space in Moscow will cost RSM companies that decide to leave the Russian market 20 billion rubles. only the next year and a half, calculated in the consulting company Stay. They specified that the total area of offices is 950 thousand square meters. m. CORE.XP has an even higher estimate: they expect that a company dealing with 630 thousand sq. m. m, after the termination of lease agreements for 25-30 billion rubles. In their calculations, analysts rely on the commercial conditions for exceeding lease agreements, floor space and remaining contracts.
The payment of “golden parachutes” associated with the loss of rental income by the owners of business centers due to the withdrawal of companies from Russia is a common practice for foreign corporations, contracts that do not provide for termination or serious penalties for early termination, explains Alexei Bogdanov, executive director of Remain. According to his conclusion, penalties within the framework of early termination of turnover cover, as a rule, 60-80% of the amount of the remaining rent paid in a lump sum. all that is needed is the loss of the hand of the office owners: receiving compensation, for example, within the period of rent for a year and a half, they demanded a new tenant in six to nine months, a reduced rival of Kommersant on the market.
Though new tenants can be an expectation. Yelena Akatova, director of landlord relations at Knight Frank Russia’s office real estate department, expects that in 2022 the release of office space will exceed the new occupied volumes, even against the backdrop of a small set of new offers. The annual volume of demand is estimated at 900 thousand square meters. m, which is lower than the average annual indicator for the last ten years, agreed by the head of the CORE.XP corporate groups service department Yulia Bashmarina. A full recovery of the market is expected no earlier than 2024, says Christina Nedrya, Head of Valuation and Analytics at Stone Hedge.
In January-June 2022, the total volume of selective or complete release of capital offices amounted to 40 thousand square meters. m, of which 45% were occupied by foreign companies, calculated the director of the department of office real estate Nicolers Karina Anaevskaya. For example, the American oil company ExxonMobil terminated the lease agreement for 4 thousand square meters ahead of schedule. m in the shopping and office center “Novinsky” in the center of the capital, owned by the corporation VEB.RF, knows the source of “Kommersant” in the real estate market. VEB.RF said that the lease agreement was terminated at the initiative of the tenant and financial issues in accordance with the terms of the agreement. Another interlocutor of Kommersant clarifies that the resident software developer JetBrains is leaving the office with an area of 2.9 thousand people. sq. m in the White Gardens business center, owned by Millhouse. JetBrains received a five-year contract in 2020. because of this, the company could seize about 150 million rubles for breaking the contract, a Kommersant source in the office market estimates. JetBrains and Millhouse do not promptly report comments.
In O1 Properties (the owner of the business centers “White Square”, “Vivaldi Plaza” and others), “Kommersant” is released that they had only one case of default by the landlord, but most of those who decided to leave before the expiration of the contract, offset most of the remaining liabilities. Denis Beer, CEO of Business Real Estate (part of AFK Sistema, Vladimir Yevtushenkov), says that the main tenants of their facilities are local companies. But, says Elena Akdayatova, many commissions for renting businesses to their state-owned legal entities continue to rent premises or reduce the area, including by selling them through sublease.