The country’s office leasing market recorded higher take-up last year, according to the 2017 Malaysian Property Market Report recently published by the Valuation and Property Services Department’s (JPPH).
In fact, The Edge reported that overall occupancy level improved to 83.3 percent, with over 770,000 sq m of office space leased. In comparison, occupancy rate only hit 82.3 percent in 2016, while the area occupied amounted to 285,379 sq m.
“Kuala Lumpur ranked first with a take-up of more than 380,000 sq m, followed by Selangor (171,072 sq m), Sabah (86,905 sq m) and Putrajaya (66,855 sq m), supported in part by the high occupancy in the newly completed buildings,” noted the report.
In 2017, 27 new office buildings entered the market, adding over 620,000 sq m of leasable space. Among them are Laman PKNS at Shah Alam, Citrine @ The Lake View Medini at Nusajaya, Public Mutual Tower at Jalan Raja Chulan and Suruhanjaya Pencegahan Rasuah Malaysia at Putrajaya’s Precinct 7.
Moreover, building starts surged by 72.1 percent to 680,613 sq m comprising 10 projects. Five of these are situated in Kuala Lumpur, offering a total of 578,348 sq m of office premises. However, new planned supply declined by 22.8 percent to 204,423 sq m from 264,918 sq m in 2016.
As of 31 December 2017, there were a total of 2,493 office buildings across the country with almost 21.5 million sq m of office space.
On the other hand, there were 62 buildings under construction that is expected to create 2.15 million sq m of office premises, while there were 30 planned buildings with a combined office area of 730,000 sq m. Most of the upcoming office projects are located in the capital.
In spite of the rising supply, JPPH underscored that office rents remained high.
“In Kuala Lumpur, office space in Petronas Twin Towers sustained its premium rent ranging from RM97 to RM129 psm. Office space in the integra Tower also recorded a higher range of RM99 to RM102 psm.”
“In Selangor, prominent buildings with premium rentals of more than RM50 psm are located in the Petaling Jaya and Damansara locality,” it added.
This article was edited by the editorial team of PropertyGuru. To contact them about this or other stories email editorialteam@propertyguru.com.my
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