End of oversupply imminent

04-11-2004

The oversupply of prime-quality office space in certain decentralized nodes will not last long, Rode predicted recently. Now, Sapoa’s September office vacancy figures suggest that above-normal vacancy figures are indeed slowly but surely being mopped up.

Johannesburg decentralized, for one, mopped up close to 300.000m² of prime-quality office space in the last 12 months. To put that in perspective, this is almost a quarter of the total supply of 1,2 million m² of Sandton and environs!

Pretoria decentralised also showed a healthy take-up of 105.000m², while Cape Town and Durban decentralized both mopped up some 33.000m².

The national, cumulative take-up of office space for grades A and B combined for the year up to September stands at 472.442m².

Rode's Report editor Garth Johnson says the temporary glut was caused by overzealous development, but that the transient nature of this state of affairs was never in doubt, given the SA economy’s sustained upswing, as well as the healthy prognosis for the next few years.