A highly complex 2021 has ended for corporate investment worldwide. A year in which important efforts were made to recover the demand for offices and the presence of people back to corporate offices, businesses, restaurants and shops, and to public spaces in general.

It was vital to return to the new normal, as it was defined in this way where it was necessary to live with a health situation where Covid-19 and its variants must coexist in the field of daily life.

Countries around the world felt firsthand that the consequences left by the contraction in economic performance were more complex and damaging, and they were more willing to handle the health consequences, in the midst of a panorama where there was no longer a blind advance in matters concerning the virus, its mutations and health effects.

Check here: Report Solili Offices 4Q 2021, demand for offices in Mexico with clear signs of recovery

We had already anticipated it after the first quarter of 2021 that a demand had been advancing that recovered slightly in the midst of unemployment that for various factors managed to reduce slowly but continuously, which made us foresee that the market was about to change by the end of the year. year or early 2022.

The office market in Mexico City, the most important at the national level, since it traditionally concentrates 80% of the demand for offices in the country, made clear the recovery process that is being experienced in this segment in the country, since For the first time, since the pandemic began, it has managed to place net demand figures in positive territory.

During 4Q 2021, Mexico City reported a commercialization of office spaces of almost 110 thousand square meters, the highest figure since the pandemic was present in the country. If we analyze the behavior of 2021, the demand totaled almost 335 thousand square meters.

Although the demand numbers are still below what was reported in pre-pandemic periods, the results for this quarter are 15% higher than those recorded last quarter and almost five times the sum demanded in the same quarter of 2020.

Many were the factors that came together so that unemployment was slowly giving ground. In principle, the companies had already drawn up their plans and strategies for the safe return of their collaborators, who would see in the hybrid scheme a form that would be maintained, at least in the medium term.

Of interest: Recovery of the corporate sector depends on the return to the offices in 2022

The reconversions of use did their thing and it was perhaps an excellent strategy for groups that quickly saw the need for other demands that existed and adapted changes of uses from offices to hotels, clinics and / or homes, always on the basis of compliant uses and according to ordinances.

Here also contributed the adequate reading of the capital government that began a series of actions conducive to rescuing employment and normality, as well as providing greater security to the spaces that were to receive these changes.

As a whole, we could see a net gross absorption for the end of 4Q 2021 with just over 67 thousand square meters, which confirms that even in the midst of the difficulties that this sector will face in 2022 there is an institutional sector that evaluates, reacts, and executes in order to maintain this bastion of real estate investment as a benchmark of resilience in the face of the crisis.

We are facing a market that faces significant challenges, however, the market indicators show a better outlook, signs that we at Solili interpret as the beginning of the recovery.