The commercial property advisory group said in a report on prices worldwide that grade A office space in Hong Kong costs $214 per square foot on average and typically rose by 11 per cent in the first nine months of 2011.
Analysts expect Hong Kong office prices to fall considerably in the coming quarters, but the city still looks likely to retain its position as the world’s most expensive office market.
Office space values per square foot are comfortably above $100 in London’s West End and in Paris, but a significant squeeze on the supply of high-quality space in central Hong Kong has pushed prices up sharply in recent months, Reuters reports.
Behind Hong Kong, London’s West End and Paris, the Japanese capital Tokyo and the City of London are the most high-value office space markets, Colliers’ data revealed.
Renegotiated terms and a challenging economic environment are expected to ease price growth in Hong Kong next year.
“Financial companies might change their strategy from expansion to cost saving,” Simon Lo Wing-fai, executive director of research and advisory at Colliers, is quoted as saying. “The pace of hiring expectation is getting less positive, and business prospects and financial prospects don’t look very strong.”
Focus has increasingly turned to potential ways of adding to Hong Kong’s highly active but under-supplied office market in recent months. Bloomberg reported recently that plans are being drawn up to turn an unused airport on the edge of the city into a new hub of commercial property and office space development.
Colliers’ report said that under half a million square feet of new office space was under construction in Hong Kong during June 2011, compared with more than five million in a number of rival Asian cities including Mumbai, Bangalore, Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo.
Editor’s notes: In 2022, it was determined that Hong Kong’s Central district was again the most expensive area in the world in which to rent office space.
London’s West End district was the 3rd most expensive place to rent office space, after New York’s Midtown District in 2nd place.
The same study by commercial real estate agency JLL found that the City of London was the 19th most expensive place to lease office space.
The City region of Paris ranked 32nd in the report, and Tokyo’s Marunouchi district ranked 17th.
In Q2 2026, total net absorption in Hong Kong reached 492,000 square feet, as leasing demand from the financial sector remained robust and pushed the Central district vacancy rate down to 8.8 per cent.
The overall Grade A vacancy rate stood at 13.1 per cent.
A lack of new supply, combined with positive net absorption, drove the citywide vacancy rate down.
Demand for Grade A space in Central was expected to stay firm through 2026, supported by a strong IPO pipeline and mainland wealth inflows. Central Grade A rents were therefore forecast to rise 10-15 per cent over the year.
Net effective rents in Central at the end of the second quarter of 2026 were HKD 48.0 per square foot per month.
London’s West End was the most expensive location for office space in 2025, with a net effective cost of USD $336.65 per square foot per annum.
Hong Kong’s Central district ranked second at $227.68 per square foot, Midtown New York third at $200.30 per square foot, and the City of London fourth at $196.94.