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South Africa’s office vacancy rate reached an all-time high at the end of September, with around 15.4% of the country’s office property space now standing vacant.
This is according to the latest Office Vacancy Survey report for the third quarter of 2021, published by industry body the SA Property Owners Association.
Of the almost 18.9 million square metres of office space in SA’s major metropolitan hubs of greater Johannesburg, Tshwane, Cape Town, eThekwini, and Nelson Mandela Bay, over 2.91 million sqm is currently unoccupied.
That equates to more than the office space of the Joburg and Cape Town core CBDs combined.
SA’s poor GDP growth in recent years, and the country effectively going into a recession even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, has been raised by listed property counters and industry analysts as a major contributor to the deteriorating office property market.
The pandemic-boosted work-from-home trend has added to the woes of office property landlords both locally and globally.
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