Office vacancy rate increases in La Lucia and uMhlanga

South Africa’s overall office vacancy rate of 13.3% is the highest since 2004 as the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic continues to filter through the real economy.

This is according to the eThekwini Municipality’s Facebook post which reflected figures from the South African Property Owners Association’s (SAPOA) fourth quarter report for 2020.

According to the post, the office vacancy rate increased by 10.5 per cent in the uMhlanga/La Lucia node which includes properties located in Armstrong Avenue (La Lucia), Lagoon Drive and Lighthouse Road (uMhlanga) and Flanders Drive (Mount Edgecombe).

“In Durban, there is an increase in office vacancy except for Durban CBD. The increase in office vacancy can be ascribed to businesses struggling to pay rental, even after payment holidays that were offered during hard lockdown, and the persistent ‘work from home’ culture, despite slight recovery in economic performance recorded in the previous quarter,” read the post.

The Municipality said there is three per cent less office space available across Durban in Quarter 4 2020 (1 583 295 sqm), than in the same quarter in the previous year (1 633 698 sqm) for the city’s key nodes.

“The collapse in business and business services investment (a key leading indicator of office vacancy rates) raise the probability of further short to medium deterioration in the vacancy rate but any forward looking view is clouded by significant uncertainty,” read the post.