Knight Frank: rents in all districts have been stable in the past two months only

Affected by the Sino-US trade war atmosphere, the rental growth of commercial buildings has been suspended. According to the report, the rents of commercial buildings in various districts have only stabilized in the past two months, and the rents in the central districts have dropped slightly from high levels.

The monthly rental report of the Knights Bay shows that there was no increase in the rents of the major commercial districts in December, including Central, Admiralty and Wan Chai, which did not rise in the month. The rents in Tsim Sha Tsui and Kowloon East decreased slightly on a monthly basis. It is 0.1% and 1.9%.

According to the report, the current high-quality commercial building in Central is about 197.9 yuan, and in October the area once rose above the historical high of 200 yuan, and recently fell slightly.

The bank said that due to the limited supply of traditional holidays and office leasing, the Grade A office leasing market in Central was quiet in December. During the same period, office leasing performance in Kowloon slowed down, with only 70 transactions recorded.

Super Grade A office rent is expected to be lowered

As the overall business environment is still affected by uncertainties such as trade wars and high rents in Central, the bank expects some large tenants of office buildings to move out of Central to non-core areas in the next 24 months.

Director of Knight Frank and Head of Research and Consulting Department of Greater China, Ji Yanxun expects office rents to be slightly reduced, especially for Grade A office buildings. At the same time, because the non-core area rent is relatively cheap, and the gap with the core area is large, I believe that this year’s non-core area will record large-scale rental transactions and support rent.