According to the latest figures on the Asia-Pacific office market, costs associated with signing up to rent office space in Singapore fell sharply last year.
A report on the subject from the property advisory giant Cushman & Wakefield (C&W) suggests that average asking prices on prime office space in Singapore dipped by as much as 16 per cent during 2012.
The fall may make Singaporean office space more appealing to regional and global businesses, particularly since offices in Hong Kong’s central business district tend to be much more expensive. In fact, C&W estimates that offices in Hong Kong’s CBD now have average asking prices twice as high as those in comparable space in Singapore.
C&W expects office rental costs in Singapore to bottom out later in 2013 and pick up toward the end of this year and into next.
“Singapore’s rent ranking globally and regionally slipped in 2012, which is emblematic of conditions in other financial centres in the region,” wrote Sigrid Zialcita, managing director of C&W’s research team in the Asia Pacific region.
“The combination of below-trend leasing activity and relatively elevated vacancies in super-Grade A space have kept rents on a downtrend over the past year, and among the lowest compared to other financial centres including Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney and Shanghai.”
Another piece of expansive research and analysis released by C&W recently placed London’s West End at the top of a list of the world’s most expensive office space markets. For the first time since 2008, the London district topped Hong Kong’s CBD on the list.
Editor’s Notes: In April 2023, prime office rent in Singapore increased by about 1 per cent each quarter, as it did in 2022.
More employees were returning to the office as fewer companies committed to a hybrid working model. Productivity has become a priority amid a deteriorating global business environment, and the recent collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse have heightened jitters.
That said, Singapore is expected to remain resilient and stable, partly because it can swiftly adapt policies in response to global economic conditions.
Companies welcoming employees back to the office following the pandemic were increasingly seeking high-quality office space. This flight to quality is reflected in the 94.1 per cent occupancy rate of prime offices in the CBD.
Some of this space is not physically occupied. It is more accurately described as ‘shadow office space’: leased office space that is not occupied. The decline in the technology sector has led to an increase in this kind of space in 2023.
Demand for flexible office space in Singapore also increased. As an example, the Guoco Midtown mixed-use development that was completed in January 2023 offers a mix of shared communal facilities and amenities such as a pool, sky park and other leisure facilities, as well as a hot-desking hub.
This type of fitted, flexible, and scalable office space has become increasingly popular with businesses seeking swing space, for instance, and those wanting office space with little to no upfront capital expenditure.
It was reported that Singapore’s CBD Grade A office rents rose 1 per cent q-o-q in 3Q2026 to $12.32 per square foot per month. This brought cumulative growth for the first three quarters of the year to 2.8 per cent.
In Q3 2026, rents for prime offices in Singapore’s Raffles Place-Marina Bay submarket rose 1.5 per cent q-o-q to an average of S$11.87 per square foot per month, while occupancy climbed 0.7 percentage points to 97.4 per cent over the same period.
It was also reported that overall CBD office vacancy fell to 5.9 per cent in 3Q2026. The figure is the lowest in 10 quarters.