The Metropolis office development boasts of 60% pre-sales

Good figures ahead of completion.

According to UOB Kay Hian, new 2013 office supply is already 44% pre-leased, driven by substantial leasing interest in The Metropolis, the largest office development due for completion in 2013, which is already 60% pre-leased.

Companies such as Shell (120,000sf) and Procter & Gamble (210,000sf) have committed to leasing space in the new development.

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Moreover, the upcoming Jem office tower is already fully-preleased to the Ministry of National Development (MND) and Asia Square Tower 2 has also pre-leased 100,000sf of space in the development.  

Office demand will continue to surprise in 2013, with multiple large leasing contracts signed by multinationals Shell, Procter and Gamble, Neptune Orient Lines and the Singapore Exchange back office committing to a combined demand of over 600,000sf of space at The Metropolis in Buona Vista in 1Q13. 

This follows the higher-than-anticipated office demand of 1.9m sf in 2012, which is higher than the average 1.2m sf p.a. of demand over the past decade.

This came despite weaker 2012 GDP growth of 1.3% and slower demand from the banking sector.Demand was driven by smaller firms in the commodities, trading, legal, IT and manufacturing space.

Although larger banks such as Credit Suisse, Citigroup and UBS have announced plans to downsize, smaller banks such as CIC and Sumitomo Mitsui and insurers such as Allianz Group have been expanding their office space requirements.Singapore is expected to benefit from a nascent recovery in the US and China in 2013, with GDP growth forecast to hit 3.0%, according to UOB-ETR.

Office demand is set to normalise to 1.6m sf this year, based on our office regression-demand analysis. In addition, NOL (100,000sf), together with the back office operations of SGX, are understood to have signed up for space in the upcoming Ho Bee development.