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 increased in price by 11 per cent in the first nine months of 2011.
Analysts said they expect to see the price of Hong Kong offices fall considerably during coming quarters but the city nevertheless looks likely to retain its position as the world’s most expensive office market.
The value of office space per square foot is 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 its 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 prompt an easing of 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 location to rent space after 2nd place New York’s Midtown District.
The same study that was carried out by commercial real estate agency JLL found that the City of London was the 19th most expensive location in which to lease office space.
The City region of Paris stood in 32nd place within the report and Tokyo’s Marunouchi district stood in 17th place.