Moscow, 10 February 2023. A total of 78,000 sq. m of warehousing space was offered for sublease in 2022 in the Moscow region, it is just a quarter of the 313,000 sq. m offered for subleasing in the second quarter of 2022.
Sublease deals made up just 11% of the total demand in 2022, which in absolute terms amounted to 148,000 sq. m, four times as much as in 2021.
The largest contributors to the total demand for subleased storage facilities were industrial companies and e-commerce tenants (50% and 20%, respectively). One of the top five key deals in the Moscow region was a 43,900-square-meter sublease by Prosveshcheniye company.
While the total volume of warehousing facilities offered for sublease is shrinking, the overall vacant spaces available in the market is on the rise. In the fourth quarter of 2022, vacant spaces available on the market totalled 618,000 sq. m, which is 2.4 times as much as in early months of the same year. Note, that despite the rising total vacancy the warehousing segment shows certain resilience in crisis. Official total vacancy rate by the end of 2022 was just 2.9%, vs. 5.0% projected in March. If the so-called hidden vacancies, missed by official data, are taken into account, the actual total vacancy rate is estimated to be 3.2%.