According to the most recent Singapore Property Market Report written by DTZ consultant – a global real estate adviser – new office space with an estimated record of 1.19 million sq. ft. was added during the third quarter of the year.
This addition made an increase of two percent in the overall office stock. The said new supply during the third quarter was higher than the total new supply in the previous year, which had a record of 1.14 million sq. ft.
Among the newly completed office spaces are the Mapletree Anson, which is located in the Anson Road/Tanjong Pagar corner of the CBD; the 71 Robinson Road that is currently marketed by Savills and Jones Lang LaSalle; and the 2HR. There are also two transitional offices located at Scotts Road.
The new supply in the third quarter resulted in an island-wide average office occupancy, which eased by a percentage point of 1.3 to 91.5 percent.
During the said quarter, the fall in the office rents is also moderated. The average gross rents per month of prime offices situated in Raffles Place had decreased by 12.4 percent to S$8.50 per sq. ft. per month in the third quarter. The decline is smaller compared to the 19.2 percent drop that was recorded in the previous quarter.
The declining rate of the rents of private industrial offices is also seen to ease down. The rent for private conventional industrial office space, with only one storey, fell down to only 2.4 percent to S$2 per sq. ft. per month, in comparison to the 6.8 percent decrease in the second quarter of the year.
The rents of the other industrial spaces, which include business as well as science parks, kept on declining, but they were moderated during the previous quarter.