As rents drop and supply rises, office space turns hot

The rent for Grade A office in Beijing's Central Business District is expected to drop 15 percent by the end of 2021 as supply is expected to rise from this year, industry experts said.

The Grade A office vacancy rate in Beijing rose to 6.1 percent from January to March, up 0.5 percent from the level of the last quarter of 2016, leading to a 0.2 percent decrease in the average monthly rent to 335.1 yuan ($48.6) per square meter, according to a report by Savills, a London-based real estate adviser.

Four new projects contributed 153,000 sq m of working spaces to the local market in the first quarter of 2017. With that, the leasable high-end office space in Beijing has grown to 10.08 million sq m, said Xiong Zhikun, head of project and development consultancy at Savills China Research.