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 competiting 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 124 square metres to
standing tenant PM Tech and 208 square metres to Intrinsic Technolgy (Pty)
Ltd 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 1066 square metres has been let in recent weeks. New tenants
include Grey Global South Africa which has taken 413 square metres,
Outsource Cabling (227 square metres), Cass (Pty) Ltd (159 square metres),
Elcon Laboratories (109 square metres), Montis Consulting (81 square metres)
and Computrolley.com (77 square metres).
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 capitalized 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
prestigious Waterford precinct at Century City.
Deans said planning for a similar new development, which would be market
driven, was in the advanced planning stages.
Publisher: Cape Business News
Source: Cape Business News
Century City vacancies drop further.
Posted On Monday, 04 August 2003 02:00 Published by eProperty News
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%.
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