Fibra Uno, the first real estate investment trust listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange, estimates that office occupancy will recover to levels prior to the Covid-19 pandemic in a period of 12 to 18 months, where occupancies are expected to be practically at pre-pandemic levels, said Gonzalo Robina, deputy director general of the trust.

In a conference on the occasion of his first financial report of the year, he explained that the reduction in the occupation of office spaces is not an effect of the automatic return because the vacancy has been due to an agreement or the end of a contract.

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He explained that, in certain cases, the distribution in the spaces of the work areas in the offices has been reconfigured; they have been modified to be more flexible and less fixed.

Robina assured that the current unemployment limits are the ones that will be seen "as a limit", so that from now on "the only thing we will see is a recovery in occupations."

In addition, the days on which workers appear at the corporate offices to work were reduced. However, he considered that it would be very difficult for the Home Office to remain a working model.

However, he said that rental prices will take more than 18 months to recover and return to the levels that were paid in the market in 2019, before the pandemia.

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Although the deputy general director of Fibra Uno said that the demand for office rental is beginning to flow, since a financial institution is currently seeking to rent 30 thousand square meters (m2), the equivalent of half the space of the Torre Mayor, located in Avenue Paseo de la Reforma.

“We had not seen a requirement of these characteristics, definitely, since 2019, but I don't know, even a little later than this. We are convinced that the issue of offices is coming back, it is not easy nor will it be fast”.

Fibra Uno reported that the office segment had an occupancy of 74.8% in the first quarter of 2022 (1Q22), a decrease of 60 basis points compared to 4Q21. When compared to 1Q21, the reduction is 1.6%.

The trust currently has in its portfolio 1,143 million m2 of offices distributed in 93 buildings, including the Torre Diana and the Torre Mayor, in Mexico City.

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