Last week Cushman & Wakefield Stiles & Riabokobylko held its annual office market presentation outlining office market trends and developments in Russia.

Sector specialists presented analysis from both landlord and occupier perspectives. Among the conclusions presented: Moscow will continue to see rental uplifts in both Class A and Class B office space in the medium to long term as demand still outweighs supply. “Our research shows that supply and demand should be running at near parallel levels in 2010 and as a consequence that is when we would expect rental rates to stabilize,” said Christopher Peters head of Research at C&W/S&R.

Rental rates are also on the increase in Russia’s regional markets, with many seeing fairly rapid growth of between 3% and 15%. The regional cities with the highest rental rates are: St.Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk.

Tim Millard, head of Advisory presented an overview of the real estate investment climate in Russia and noted that there was, “a growing inflow of capital from abroad because they now have experience in investing locally and there is increasing availability of genuine investment grade product available to them.” Millard added that institutional funds with access to cheap money or low interest rates were also entering the market.