Singapore has emerged as Asia’s second best office rental market for tech firms and the third for financial institutions, revealed a new report published by Colliers International on Tuesday (27 Nov).

According to the property consultancy’s report entitled “Top Occupier Locations in Asia: Implications for Investors”, the city-state took second spot for the tech sector thanks to the high availability of talent and being the best place that promotes human well-being.

In fact, Singapore bagged the number spot on employment criteria and for availability of talent, as well as human aspirational metrics, which takes into account the environment, safety and quality of living.

For the finance industry, the city-state was ranked third in Asia for being business-friendly and for its political stability, excellent infrastructure and strong regulatory governance.

Aside from leading Asia in terms of employment criteria and the aforementioned human metrics, Singapore is also a vital wealth management hub, although it has a lower ranking on property metrics.

Moving forward, office rents in Singapore are expected to increase by 8.0 percent for the whole of 2019, and average at 5.4 percent per annum from 2018 to 2022. Rents of business parks are also forecasted to grow at a healthy rate, said the property consultancy.

Separately, Bangalore and Shenzhen secured the first and third spots respectively for Asia’s best office rental markets for tech firms, while Hong Kong and Tokyo were named as the top two office markets for the financial sector.

“Growth potential and availability of talent are vital to technology firms, for which the top three locations are Bangalore, Singapore and Shenzhen,” said Colliers’ research head for Asia, Andrew Haskins.

“Economic scale and wealth measures are pertinent to financial groups, for which the top three locations are Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore.”

Source: 28 November 2018, CommercialGuru