The median quoted service charge advance is PLN 29.80 per m² per month in Warsaw, PLN 25.00 in Wrocław and PLN 22.00 in Kraków (OfficeList Pulse, 12.09.2026). For 1,000 m² in Warsaw, that comes to PLN 357,600 a year, or close to 28% of the total office bill. The advance is not a price: after each year, the landlord reconciles it against the costs it actually incurred.
Tenants ask about the rent and negotiate the rent. Yet alongside it runs a second bill which, in Warsaw, accounts for almost 28% of annual office costs, and which is often accepted exactly as the landlord drafted it. Below are the current medians for Poland's three largest markets and what they mean in zloty.
Office service charges in 2026
The median quoted service charge advance stands at PLN 29.80 per m² per month in Warsaw, PLN 25.00 in Wrocław and PLN 22.00 in Kraków. These figures come from OfficeList Pulse, as at 12 September 2026.
The proportions are worth noting straight away: the rent gap between Warsaw and Kraków is around 21%, whereas the gap in service charges is as much as 35%. The second bill differentiates the markets more sharply than the first.
What this means over a year
A rate per square metre per month says little until you multiply it by your floor area and by twelve months. For a tenant with 1,000 m² in Warsaw, the bill looks like this:
The last sentence of that caption is worth reading twice, because it is the shortest case for not conceding this item without a fight. Two zloty per square metre negotiated off the service charge is worth as much as almost half a euro off the rent, yet nearly all the energy in negotiations goes into the latter.
Annual service charge cost by floor area
| Floor area | Warsaw (PLN 29.80) | Wrocław (PLN 25.00) | Kraków (PLN 22.00) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 m² | PLN 178,800 | PLN 150,000 | PLN 132,000 |
| 1,000 m² | PLN 357,600 | PLN 300,000 | PLN 264,000 |
| 2,000 m² | PLN 715,200 | PLN 600,000 | PLN 528,000 |
| 5,000 m² | PLN 1,788,000 | PLN 1,500,000 | PLN 1,320,000 |
Annual advance at the market median, excluding VAT. Calculation: rate × floor area × 12 months.
What you are actually paying for
The service charge covers the cost of running the building, which all tenants benefit from. The landlord apportions it in proportion to the area each tenant leases. It is made up of four groups of costs:
- Day-to-day operations - security, cleaning of common areas, servicing and maintenance of building systems, minor repairs, grounds maintenance.
- Shared utilities - electricity, heating, water and sewage for common areas, building ventilation and air conditioning.
- Statutory charges - property tax, the perpetual usufruct fee, building insurance.
- Administration - the property manager's fee, building accounting, technical and administrative support.
Not everything that appears on the building's invoices belongs in this amount. Upgrades, the owning company's corporate costs, the upkeep of vacant space and letting commissions regularly turn up in reconciliations even though they are not operating costs. We will return to this in the next article in the series.
The advance is not the price
This distinction determines how much you will really pay. The figure in the offer is a twelve-month forecast, based on the building's budget or on the previous year's reconciliation. Once the year ends, the landlord compares the total of your advances with the costs it actually incurred and settles the difference with either a balancing charge or a refund.
This has two consequences. First, a low advance in an offer does not mean low costs, only a lower forecast, and you will pay the difference anyway. Second, a flawed reconciliation does not stop at one year, because it is used to set the advance for the next. You keep paying for the same error for another twelve months.
A landlord should not profit from service charges, and usually does not. But neither does it pay them with its own money: it pays them with tenants' money. So there is no natural incentive to keep these costs down. This is not an accusation of bad faith, simply a description of how the arrangement works.
How to use these figures in negotiations
A market median is not an argument in itself. It becomes one when you compare it with a specific offer and ask about the difference.
- Compare before you sign. If the offer is well above the median for the city and district, ask for the building's cost breakdown rather than simply an adjustment to the amount.
- Ask about the history, not the forecast. The most reliable information is the building's reconciliation for the past two years and the line-by-line growth in costs.
- Negotiate the mechanism, not the amount. A cap on the annual increase in costs controlled by the landlord is worth more than a one-off reduction in the advance, because it applies for the entire lease term.
- Compare offers on total cost. A building with lower rent and a higher service charge can turn out more expensive than one that looks worse at first glance.
What these figures do not tell you
Three caveats without which the benchmark can mislead:
- This is the median of offers, not of your reconciliation. The amount you actually pay depends on the wording of your lease and on what the building has put into its costs.
- The district matters. A city-wide median combines new buildings in the centre with older stock outside it, and differences in technical standard feed through into running costs.
- A mixed-use building is a separate case. If offices, retail and a hotel share one roof, the cost allocation key becomes the critical issue, not the rate per square metre.
You can check current medians for individual cities and districts in OfficeList Pulse. If you are only now putting together a negotiating strategy, start with our guide to negotiating an office lease in 2026, and decode the terminology in offers with our glossary of leasing terms. If you have already received a reconciliation and it does not match your own calculations, start with a service charge audit.
