Starting the countdown

The office sector in the Ukrainian capital is entering an important stage. Take-up is outstripping demand. There is a lack of quality space in central locations. Tenants are expressing the need for more office space. ?Is the Kyiv office market finally out of the woods? The crisis wasn't exactly mild for Ukraine, a country which had a long list of problems to solve before the first bad news started to come in from abroad. The credit crunch in 2008-2009, and its repercussions, brought to a halt the rapid real estate development in the country, which had previously been noted for a number of bold projects for sleek high-rise buildings. Naturally, the crisis forced developers to put such visionary projects on the back-burner. The numbers attest to this - the Kyiv office market was one of the market sectors to take the hardest hit, with rents sliding by as much as 50-70 pct, depending on the building, over the crisis period. After a 14.8 pct GDP decline in 2009, the economy grew 4.2 pct in