Singapore office landlords have that empty feeling

Singapore

SINGAPORE'S office landlords are among the world's most luckless right now, and they have builders to blame. The market already has an empty feel to it, and as developers add more space in a slowing economy, property owners' misery could keep compounding.

Over the past year, the city's three big office real estate investment trusts - CapitaLand Commercial, Suntec and Keppel Reit - have lost investors between 24 and 30 per cent. Exclude them, and the average return on Reits that have at least US$1 billion in market value and garner 40 per cent or more of their revenue from owning office properties has been minus 10 per cent globally, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Keppel Reit and CapitaLand Commercial, which reported earnings this week, are offering dividend yields of between 6.5 and 7.6 per cent, a hefty premium on the 2.4 per cent yield on 10-year Singapore government bonds. Yet investors don't want to catch a falling knife.