Significant lettings have resulted in office vacancies at Century City dropping to 13.5% in the third quarter of 2003 - a strong improvement on seven months ago when vacancies stood at close to 20%.
Greg Deans, managing director of Century City Ltd, said that since the start of 2003 demand for office space had been picking up steadily with vacancies dropping to 15.7% in the second quarter of 2003 and by a further 2.2% to 13.5% in July.
The vacancies compare favourably with competing office nodes in Cape Town.
According to the June 2003 office vacancy survey by the South African Property Owners' Association, office vacancies in the Cape Town CBD stood at 15.4%, Claremont at 25.7% and Rondebosch/Newlands at 17.45%.
Recent lettings at Century City include an additional 124m2 to standing tenant PM Tech and 208m2 to Intrinsic Technology in the
Knowledge Park building. Tracy Rogers of RMB Properties said there was strong interest in the remaining vacant space and the level of inquiries had picked up significantly.
There have also been a number of recent lettings at neighbouring Century Square where 1 066m2 has been let in recent weeks. New tenants include Grey Global South Africa, which has taken 413m2, Outsource Cabling (227m2), Cass (Pty) Ltd (159m2), Elcon Laboratories (109m2), Montis Consulting (81m2) and Computrolley.com (77m2).
Deans said that while it was still early days there were some encouraging signs that the commercial property market, which has been in the doldrums for the past two years, had bottomed with demand now starting to catch up with supply.
"We have definitely seen an increase in both the level of inquiries and the deals concluded. With further decreases in interest rates in the offing and strong economic growth prospects for the commercial sectors in South Africa, we predict this could be the start of an anticipated steady increase in demand for office space."
Although the commercial property market has been flat there have been pockets of activity and Century City has capitalised on this by bringing Waterford Mews, a cluster of 12 stand-alone office blocks for small- to medium-size users to the market.
The first of two office blocks, which are predominantly being developed on an owner-occupier basis, have been completed with work on three more due to start shortly.
Only four development opportunities remain in this project which is situated in the Waterford precinct at Century City.
Deans said planning for a similar new development, which would be market driven, was in the advanced planning stages. - Cape Argus
Publisher: Cape Argus
Source: Cape Argus