THERE are signs that office vacancies are levelling off in some Cape Town nodes, says Dave Russell of Baker Street Properties, a commercial, industrial and retail property broking organisation in the city.
Russell says although the recently published SA Property Owners' Association office vacancy figures for Cape Town show that in most office nodes vacancies continue to increase, there are signs that in certain nodes they may have peaked.
"The quarterly survey reflects vacancies in premier A and B grade properties and excludes C and D grade, and while not all office nodes are included in the survey, notably the V &A Waterfront, it includes the main nodes in the northern suburbs, southern suburbs, Century City, Pinelands and the Cape Town central business district (CBD)."
He says that while the survey is not intended for the entire market, certain trends can be seen in the various areas surveyed, which reflect general market conditions.
"It is general market knowledge that vacancies in offices over the past three years have increased substantially. However, the survey shows just how these increases affected the various nodes. For example in March 2000 in the Cape Town CBD the vacancy factor in all the above graded buildings was 6,7%, today it is 16%. This increase was mainly due to decentralisation at the time."
He says that in Claremont three years ago, the vacancy level was 5,9% for all grades. It is now 22,3%.
Russell says the main reason for this is overdevelopment, which anticipated a continuation of the decentralisation trend along with the vacancies created in the merger of Norwich and Fedsure, subsequently taken over by Investec, which run their operations from their new regional office in the CBD.
A year ago in March the combined vacancy in the Cape Town CBD was 14,6%, while it is now 16%.
May 14 2003 07:35:14:000AM Business Day Reporter Business Day 1st Edition
Publisher: Business Day
Source: Business Day
THERE are signs that office vacancies are levelling off in some Cape Town nodes, says Dave Russell of Baker Street Properties, a commercial, industrial and retail property broking organisation in the city.
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