Liu Minxia, Zhang Yang

    mllmx@msn.com

    THE stock woes starting in June last year and the harsher rules to shore up the online finance sector resulted in slower growth in rent for top-grade offices in Shenzhen and higher vacancies in some buildings, a leading commercial real estate services firm said Tuesday.

    Before June, rent for grade-A offices in Shenzhen was increasing by 18 percent from a year ago, but due to the financial turmoil, demand for top offices dropped markedly starting in the third quarter of last year. As a result, average rent for top-grade offices rose by 7.4 percent to 268 yuan (US$44) per square meter per month last year from a year ago, according to Jones Lang LaSalle’s Shenzhen division.

    “It’s obvious that financial institutions became more cost-cautious in the second half of 2015,” said Xia Chunyi, head of the division. “Moreover, the P2P (peer-to-peer) rules laid out in December led to closures of some smaller P2P lending firms, in stark contrast to the first half of last year when such firms fight for top-grade offices to build their image and credibility no matter how expensive the offices were.”

    An ample new supply of 400,000 square meters of top offices in the fourth quarter also exerted strong pressure on rent and contributed to the rising vacancy rate for 2015 to 9.3 percent from 3.9 percent at the end of the third quarter.

    The new supplies of top-grade offices in Nanshan District last year took up 23 percent of the city’s total, and many multinational companies moved to Nanshan, consuming 380,000 square meters of top offices in the district.

    Sales of new grade-A offices, however, were not affected, as big investors, especially banks, bought properties to expand in the city. Prices for new grade-A offices in Shenzhen rose by 5.8 percent last year from a year ago.

    It’s expected that 1 million square meters of new top-grade offices will be completed this year, which will push up the vacancy rate to nearly 20 percent and drag down rent a little bit, Xia said.

    Meanwhile, rent for high-end shops rose by 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter of last year from a year ago while the vacancy rate for shops remained almost the same as a year ago, at 4 percent, despite an ample supply of new shops.

    “It was satisfactory that about 90 percent of shops in newly opened shopping centers in Shenzhen last year were rented out and it was a result of strategy and image adjustment of shopping centers and their willingness to woo young consumers,” said Xu Bin, a director with the division.

    The online sales boom and cross-border e-commerce have pushed up demand for storehouses, with the average vacancy rate dropping to 4 percent at the end of last year from 12 percent a year ago and rent rising by 8.3 percent.