Singapore office rents ease to 0.5% rise in Q4; vacancy rate climbs to 12.1%

RENTS of office space in the central region of Singapore rose by 0.5 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2018 over the previous three months - a slower pace of gain compared with the 2.5 per cent rise in the third quarter, figures from the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) showed on Friday.

For the whole of 2018, the rental index rose 7.4 per cent, compared with the increase of 0.4 per cent in 2017.

URA's fourth quarter data show prices of office space in the central region increased by 2.4 per cent after inching up 0.1 per cent in the previous quarter.

The price index rose 5.7 per cent for the whole of last year, against a drop of 2.4 per cent in 2017.

At the end of the fourth quarter of 2018, there was a total supply of about 732,000 square metres in gross floor area (GFA) of office space in the pipeline, slightly less than the 793,000 sq m of space at the end of the previous quarter.

The amount of occupied office space increased by 39,000 sq m in net lettable area (NLA) in the fourth quarter, compared with the rise of 45,000 sq m in the previous quarter. The stock of office space rose by 59,000 sq m NLA, compared with the increase of 28,000 sq m NLA in the previous quarter.

As a result, the islandwide vacancy rate of office space rose a notch to 12.1 per cent at the end of Q4 2018, from 12.0 per cent at the end of the previous quarter.