Tokyo Inner and Outer Central Districts among World’s Costliest for Office Space
Friday, June 19th, 2009Where London’s West End usually held its spot as the world’s most expensive area for office real estate, Tokyo’s Inner and Outer Central Districts have jumped into the top five, with the Inner District coming out on top and relegating London’s West End to second place. This was the result of a survey report recently released by CB Richard Ellis Group (CBRE).
CBRE follows office occupancy costs in around 170 cities, and this year, Moscow came in third, and Hong Kong’s Central Business District was placed fifth in their survey. London’s West End failed to hold on to the top spot. This is largely due to the economic climate, which has made businesses extremely wary of making new acquisitions for office space. Expansion of businesses has also ground to almost a complete halt, and as a result, there is a much lower demand for office space, depressing prices by almost 20% this year in comparison with last year.
Only three cities have escaped this overall decline – the French city Marseille, Perth in Australia, and the American town Charlotte. This however may be attributed to the fact that they previously experienced low costs or are emerging cities, which hardly have any track record. Therefore, the remaining cities of the 170 surveyed,
London’s West End has seen one of the worst falls in office space prices, as the average cost used to be around USD 300 per square foot, but has now fallen to USD 170 per square foot, according to CBRE’s Global Chief Economist, Dr. Raymond Torto. He also remarked that areas catering to employers from the financial sector are doing much worse than the rest.


