OFFICE space vacancy in the Philippines dipped in the third quarter of the year, US-based real estate firm CBRE said.
Jie Espinosa, CBRE country head of advisory and transaction, noted all subdistricts of Metro Manila saw a rise in their commercial office space segment – a first this pandemic.
Overall, based on the CBRE study, there are around 1.69 million square meters of available office space in Metro Manila.
Most of these are in the Bay Area in the cities of Pasay and Parañaque with around 367,000 square meters of office space vacancy.
Meanwhile, Makati City has 359,000 square meters, Ortigas in Pasig City has 341,000 square meters, Quezon City has 263,000 square meters, and Alabang has 191,000 square meters of vacant office space.
Fort Bonifacio in Taguig City has the lowest office space vacancy at 6.8% or around 162,000 square meters of available space.
“The third quarter numbers that we’re seeing, the dip happened across all the board for the first time,” Espinosa said.
“Most of your buildings are starting to experience an uptick in terms of demand, so there’s less vacancy out there,” he added.
Though vacancy numbers remain high, Espinosa said there is potential demand as the economy opens up more. There was also a dip in vacancy despite the exit of some POGO offices and the work-from-home setup of some firms.
Espinosa said the BPO sector expanded further in the past years and there was also a rise in office space leases in the financial and insurance sector, as well as life sciences.
“If it weren’t for the outsourcing sector, we would have been in a tougher situation during the past two to three years. They’ve largely backfilled the gap that was left behind by the POGO sector,” he said.
The figures are also similar in the provinces, particularly Iloilo and Cebu, which has an office space vacancy of 25.8% or 314,000 square meters.
Bacolod has 39,000 square meters, Davao has 37,000 square meters and Iloilo has 8,000 square meters of vacant office space.
Because of the office space vacancies across the country, the rental space has not yet increased significantly despite inflation as more developers need to offer more affordable packages to tenants. (ABS-CBN News)
