Vacant office space doubles in Dubai

Office space vacancies in Dubai have doubled to 16 per cent in the past six months as demand fell and new stock came onto the market, according to a report today by Jones Lang LaSalle, a property consultant. Companies are scaling back or reducing operations in response to the global credit crisis at a time when many developments are being completed. An additional 4.7 million square feet of office space came on stream in the second half of 2008, bringing the total stock to 29.5 million square feet. As a result, vacancy rates doubled from 7 per cent in July to 16 per cent by the end of the year. "This headline figure, however, does not reveal the true story," the report said. "Because of the barriers to entry into free zones, there are pockets of higher vacancy in areas such as the Technology, E-Commerce and Media free zone (TECOM), Jumeirah Lake Towers and Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC)." The report does however estimate that 50 per cent of the proposed supply planned between 2009 and 2011 is unlikely to come on line due to projects being put on hold or scaled back. "As a result we have reduced our estimate of total additional supply over the next three years from 70 million square feet to around 34.6 million square feet." agiuffrida@thenational.ae