Overall Singapore Office Rents Up 1.9% In 2021

SINGAPORE – Office rents across the city-state edged up by 1.9 percent for the whole of 2021, reversing the 8.5 percent decline for the entire of 2020, according to the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s (URA) 4th Quarter 2021 real estate statistics that were published on Friday morning.

During the fourth quarter of 2021, Singapore saw a 0.9 percent uptick in office rents versus a 3.5 percent drop in the preceding quarter.

“The amount of occupied office space decreased by 10,000 sq m (nett) in 4th Quarter 2021, compared with the decrease of 5,000 sq m (nett) in the previous quarter. The stock of office space decreased by 23,000 sq m (nett), compared with the increase of 26,000 sq m (nett) in the previous quarter.”

“As a result, the island-wide vacancy rate of office space decreased to 12.8 percent as at the end of 4th Quarter 2021, from 12.9 percent as at the end of the previous quarter,” noted the URA.

Meanwhile, prices of office space dipped by 1.8 percent in Q4 2021, which represent a softer decline from the 2.4 percent fall in the prior quarter. For the whole of 2021, office prices in Singapore decreased by 5.8 percent versus the heftier drop of 10.7 percent seen in 2020.

In the 4th quarter, the overall stock of office space in the pipeline in terms of gross floor area (GFA) reached roughly 786,000 sq m GFA. This is up from the 755,000 sq m recorded during the previous quarter, added the URA.