Taipei’s vacancy rates for industrial space leased to large overseas companies, including Samsung Electronics Co, may drop as tenants expand and as the economy improves, according to Colliers International.
The vacancy rate for so-called high-specification industrial buildings, or those rented to multinational companies that each take at least 930m2 of space, may fall to 15 percent next year from 18.5 percent at the end of September, the property research company said.
More companies signed leases at the Neihu Technology Park (內湖科技園區) in the eastern part of Taipei as they expanded or moved from the city’s central business district, where rents are higher, Colliers said.
About 62,615m2 of space, equivalent to 12 football fields, were rented in Neihu between April and September, it said.
“There will be continued demand for such buildings in Neihu because the rent is lower and the quality of the property is decent,” said Jason Hung (洪煥哲), a Taipei-based senior manager at Colliers.
Other than Samsung, the world’s largest maker of memory chips, televisions and flat screens, tenants at the Neihu park also include LG Display Co, Nvidia Corp and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Hung said.
The expansion is part of the government’s plan to develop the eastern outskirts of Taipei by luring employers out of the capital’s downtown.
Taiwan’s technology companies, which make products including Sony Corp’s Nintendo and Apple Inc’s iPhones and iPads, have expanded as orders have increased.
Rents rose 0.3 percent to NT$335 (US$11.08) per square meter in September from March, the report said.
Rent increases may be “stagnant” for the next 12 months as the excess space is taken up, with gains for the next year capped at 3 percent, it said.
About NT$9.14 billion of these industrial properties were sold in the six months to September, Colliers said.
Buyers included Fubon Life Insurance Co (富邦人壽), Gintech Energy Corp (昱晶能源) and United Microelectronics Co (聯電).
Hewlett-Packard Co, the world’s largest computer maker, officially opened its new Taiwan headquarters on Oct. 11, taking 33,050m2 at the Nangang Software Park (南港軟體園區).
Yahoo Inc is set to lease more than 30,000m2 when it moves to the site next month, raising the foreign tenancy in the latest of three buildings in the project to 68 percent.
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