Singapore Research Office Q3 2021(Knight Frank)

OFFICE RENTS BOTTOM OUT IN Q3 2021

Rents and occupancy

• Prime Grade office rents in the Raffles Place / Marina Bay precinct grew for the first time since Q4 2019, with rents rising by 0.2% quarter-on-quarter (q-o-q) to S$9.98 per square foot per month (psf pm). Office rents turned a corner and bottomed out in Q3 2021 as occupancy rates for prime offices in the precinct remained relatively stable, falling marginally by 0.7 percentage points (pp) q-o-q to 93.6%, a slight reversal from the 0.1 pp growth recorded in Q2 2021.
• In tandem with the firm signs of improvement in the office rental market, the volume of pre-termination space available fell 78.9% q-o-q in Q3 2021, declining empathically from the 360,000-sf estimate in Q2 2021 to some 76,000 sf in Q3 2021. The decrease in shadow space was expected as the flight-to-quality continued with corporates taking advantage of the rare opportunity to snap up premium spaces in prime buildings that were normally fully occupied, before rents start to increase significantly.

This article was originally published in https://www.knightfrank.com/