“In our view, retail’s performance may be worse than office in terms of rental improvement, as the office market usually benefits more quickly from a sentiment boost,” said Praveen Choudhary, head of Hong Kong and India real estate research at the New York-based investment bank.
Since 2019, office rents in the city have dropped by 40 per cent, according to CBRE. Last year, the segment’s rents declined by 6.3 per cent.
From 2025 to 2026, about 6 million square feet of new office space will come on line including 2.6 million sq ft at International Gateway Centre in West Kowloon and 1.06 million sq ft at Lee Garden Eight in Causeway Bay, according to data complied by Midland IC&I.
In the retail segment between 2019 and 2023, the city’s four core shopping locations – Causeway Bay, Tsim Sha Tsui, Central and Mong Kok – saw rents fall between 29 per cent and 47 per cent, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Last year, rents in this segment improved from a range of 3.2 per cent to 6.7 per cent.
