- In the office market, due to the impact of the pandemic, it is difficult to plan not just for five years in advance, but even for 6 months, so tenants are looking for solutions that are flexible, easy and quick to vary. Time has come for flex office providers like New Work?

- There are several trends at the same time. The most obvious is that because of the epidemic, people work partly or completely from home. Part of the office building is vacant, even if the company was not affected by the downturn due to the pandemic. The home office is now widespread. Companies that have signed contracts for office space in recent years are now trying to lease vacant floors as sublets. This has created a shadow market that is surprisingly large in scope and characterized by price levels thirty to fifty percent lower than prices on the “normal” market. This obviously has a very strong impact on the market as a whole. According to the news, Telekom is preparing to return 15,000 square meters to Wing (which has developed its headquarters), and Raiffeisen is also rethinking its previously announced demand. Returning to your question, theoretically this could be even good for us, but the tenants are not occurring at us either. It is likely that the vaccines that are just out now on the market will have a significant impact on the economy by June 2021, meaning that companies are planning ahead only for this period. Big companies are very careful, they wait out, and they postpone their decisions. We welcome many small and medium-sized tenants, but overall they cannot compensate for the decline of the big ones.

- Meanwhile, the digitalization of the office market is moving forward with full speed.

- This digitization trend is not related to the previous question, but it happens at the same time. Thanks to the possibility of digital management, our partners can use the office even easier and more securely. I am sure that anyone who cannot offer such solutions in the near future will lose their customers.

- Is the digitization of the office market the inevitable future?

- Yes, it is becoming a reality, and change is now happening faster than ever. So far, technology solutions have focused primarily on managing office spaces. Now, due to COVID-19, completely new demands are emerging in terms of communication with tenants. Installed on a mobile phone, an easily tangible element of this of applications is that it opens the rented area with a QR code; the license plate recognition system automatically raises the barrier in the underground garage. The elevator also knows which levels are ours. Booking a meeting room, ordering IT services and communications with couriers is easy like never before. All services are in one hand. Not to forget: you can use the ticket system to report any problems for quick troubleshooting. All this is done contactlessly, quickly and efficiently. So the smart app helps to limit the physical connection between tenants and operator representatives through its built-in communication interface, while still increasing the efficiency of communication.

- Assume the vaccination will be successful. Are fat years coming back?

- Every thunderstorm is followed by sunshine, but I don’t think the chances of a recession will be lower as the pandemic eases. Closed downtown shops and restaurants will reopen, but the recovery will not be as fast and strong as some media suggests. There are currently 400.000 - square meters of office space available in Budapest; another 600,000 sqm is under construction while the entire stock is only about 3.8 million sqm. Even if we return to the offices, this quantity is simply too large to be absorbed. If we meet again next October, we will be talking about a vacancy rate of around 20%, a similar value what we have once experienced during the last crisis. Nothing will be the same: on one hand, social distancing will require more distance between workstations, which could mean extra space requirements, but many workers will spend only 2-3 days a week in their “regular” workplace on a rotating basis. They will perform the remaining tasks from the home office. On the other hand, only the technically best equipped office buildings will have a chance; an effective air exchange and filter system will be a must. The pandemic, as a common bad experience of the society, also appears in the office buildings: the concept of a firewall known from information technology will soon extend to the field of hygiene: workers in office buildings do not want strangers to show up in their work area. We all want to receive guests differently, we will hold a conference differently, and we will organize the work differently. Old buildings would simply be too expensive to convert to all of these requirements.

- That means, the future belongs to flexible, digitally and contactless managed offices?

- If you mean flexibility for the spaces, access to services and office management equally, then yes. Due to Digitalization the shared economy will take over a significant part of the business, this is why we just established a company called workcloud24 zrt, a spin off where we employ the best talents to develop digital systems to manage office space like a platform for a toolbox to convert regular space into flex space and workforce management via a digital office pass.

- New Work has been established in Budapest, but now it seems that they are focusing more on the Polish market. Why?

- Simply due to the size of the market. Poland is quadruple of Hungary, and there are 7 major cities worth developing. Next year, we will increase the number of our offices in our region from 18 to 30, of which there will be seven or eight in Poland, one or two in the Czech Republic, and the same number here in Budapest.

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