Office buildings offer flexible rents to woo tenants
25-05-2012
 The Bitexco Financial Tower in downtown HCMC - Photo: Dinh Dung |
The market has seen a shift in investors’ strategic trajectory. Landlords previously asked for high rentals but this strategy has become old-fashioned as they are more flexible in rent negotiations with tenants, said Greg Ohan, director of office services of CB Richard Ellis Vietnam (CBRE).
In the past five months, office building developers have been rushing to seek tenants to have their unoccupied space filled up. There is a certain difference between ask prices of old and new Grade-A office buildings. Those established high-rise buildings ask for VND750,000 (US$36) per square meter while new ones set the rent at VND540,000-570,000 (US$26-27).
Falling rents have brought back many tenants to the downtown area after they were forced to move to the city’s fringe areas to cut office leasing costs.
In fact, the Grade A market in the first quarter saw 13,000 square meters of office space occupied, up from the 8,500 square meters recorded in the same period last year.
Some major new office building projects that are expected to enter the market this year will supply the city with an additional 84,000 square meters of office space. The President Palace in the intersection of Nguyen Du and Nam Ky Khoi Nghia streets is among them.
HCMC’s office market has a total of 1.9 million square meters, including 805,000 square meters of Grade B office space, 304,000 square meters of Grade A and the remainder Grade C.
