For some providers of commercial real estate, things are likely to get tight.

This can now be seen in the most important commercial market, the office market.

Due to job cuts and more frequent working from home, German banks in Frankfurt in particular need noticeably less office space for their employees.

This is most obvious at Commerzbank, but Deutsche Bank and Deka are also reorganizing their locations.

On the other hand, American banks such as JP Morgan and Bank of America, which only recently moved into new buildings and are continuing to grow from a low level, are sticking to their rented floors for the time being.

Hanno Mussler

Editor in Business.

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Michael Psotta

Editor in business, responsible for the real estate section.

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At the end of the year, Commerzbank moves out of the high-rise “Galileo”, which is only a few dozen meters from the headquarters and which served as the company headquarters for the Dresdner Bank, which was bought in 2009.

With the “Galileo”, Commerzbank is giving up 36,000 square meters of office space.

At the end of 2021, Commerzbank had already left the Fürstenhof, which is also in the vicinity of the headquarters, and thus given up 14,000 square meters.

The headquarters have 52,800 square meters of usable space, plus another high-rise building on the other side of the main train station (“Händlerhaus”).

Again, there could be a further reduction.

"We are constantly reviewing our real estate portfolio and, if necessary, using opportunities to make adjustments," says a spokeswoman.

Because even after the pandemic, home office will be used more.

Deutsche Bank also freely states: "We need less space." They want to concentrate on fewer buildings, but equip them with a higher standard and, above all, focus on collaborative work.

For the Frankfurt location, this means, for example, that the office space in the neighboring city of Eschborn should be reduced by at least 40 percent by the end of 2024, based on the level at the beginning of 2021.

"We will concentrate on three core buildings in the city center," says the spokesman for Deutsche Bank, including the headquarters with the twin towers on the Taunusanlage.

Foreign banks buck the trend

So while Deutsche Bank is staying the same in downtown Frankfurt and is shedding office space on the outskirts of the metropolitan area, Dekabank is going in the opposite direction.

The fund company of the savings banks has moved into a new building with 46,000 square meters of office space in the Niederrad district on the other side of the Main, which should be particularly suitable for the new "hybrid" work.

3400 employees and thus four fifths will have their office jobs in Niederrad in the future.

This month, Deka is moving out of the “Skyper” high-rise in downtown Frankfurt, which previously housed 500 jobs.

Deka will leave its "Trianon" headquarters in downtown Frankfurt, which currently has 1,800 jobs and a rental area of ​​37,000 square meters, in 2024.

Then the move to the new headquarters "FourT1" is due,