Increased supply of office spaces

The supply of office space has increased in the first six months of this year in seven major cities of the country when compared to last year, despite the Corona pandemic. According to JLL India, 2.51 crore square feet (sq ft) of office space was supplied during January-June this year, recording 75 per cent growth over the previous year. The new office space supply in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai was 1.43 crore sq ft during the same period last year.

Rahul Arora, JLL India Office Leasing Advisor, said developers believed that there will be strong growth in office leasing operations as businesses resumed operations after the lockdown. Similarly, if more people can be vaccinated in the second half of this year, there will be an increased number of people coming back to work from their offices. This will lead to a steady growth, he said.

Hyderabad had 37.3 lakh sq.ft in January-June last year. Office space supply grew by 3 per cent to 38.4 lakh sq.ft this year. In Bengaluru, the growth was from 33.5 lakh sq.ft to 95.3 lakh sq.ft and from 38.8 lakh sq.ft to 52.3 lakh sq.ft in Delhi, while it was from 22.9 lakh sq.ft to 47.3 lakh sq.ft in Mumbai and 6 lakh sq.ft to 12.8 lakh sq.ft in Pune. Chennai witnessed a decline in office space supply from 5.3 lakh sq.ft to 5 lakh sq.ft and no new office space supply was witnessed in Kolkata.

However, the net lease transactions in seven major cities across the country recorded a downward trend in the first six months of this year. About 1.19 crore sq.ft office space was leased out during January-June last year, which fell to 96.3 lakh sq.ft during corresponding period this year, recording 19 per cent decline.