Vacancy rates for Grade-A offices edged up to 11.1 percent last quarter, from 10.3 percent previously, as concerns over the US quantitative easing and Europe’s recession continued to weaken sentiment, international property broker Jones Lang LaSalle said in a recent report.
“The slowdown in the Taipei office market persisted in the quarter ending last month as government and private agencies lowered their GDP forecasts,” Jones Land LaSalle Taiwan director Joe Lin (林大喬) said in the report.
The softening came despite a significant increase in take-up rates, which rose to 13,910 ping (45,903 m2) last quarter, from 3,722 ping three months earlier, on the back of owner occupancy, Lin said.
Taipei New Horizon (臺北文創), a brand new office building with more than 12,000 ping of floor space, joined the Xinyi District (信義) submarket this quarter, raising vacancy rate in the prime district to 16.5 percent, up 2.6 percents from the last quarter, the report said.
Corporate tenants grew cautious about leasing last quarter, as only 40 percent of new take-ups involved new leases, compared with 60 percent for the same period in the past five years, the report said.
Monthly rental value averaged NT$2,445 (US$82.79) per ping last quarter, up 0.1 percentage points from the quarter before.
More corporate tenants are to relocate to less expensive office space until the economic landscape is more appealing, the report said.
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