Quarter Of All Office Space Vacant In Dubai

The importance of the physical office is unlikely to be diminished in Dubai as many businesses see a loss of productivity during the current "work from home" era caused by the coronavirus crisis, according to experts. Robert Thomas, head of agency at real estate consultants Core, said that although the work from home will remain prevalent within hybrid models, it has also created problems for some businesses. "While the initial adoption of widespread work from home arrangement was met with great enthusiasm, many enterprises are now witnessing that lack of social connections and no clear Out of the total 104.9 million sq ft of office stock in Dubai, nearly 25.2 million sq ft is vacant, with the volume of vacant stock gradually increasing over the last five years. That said, a polarising performance has been witnessed between Grade A and Grade B areas with most of the market witnessing a flight to quality with Grade A areas typically witnessing resilience in both occupancy and rental drops. According to Core, office rents have been under pressure across all the 15 districts it tracks. However, freezones with predominantly single owned office assets with relatively higher occupancy levels such as DIFC, Dubai Internet City and Media City, DWTC, DAFZA and D3 have shown resilience with nominal rental drops.