News: Office rental yields, occupancies remain strong in India despite pandemic-25-01-2021
Despite the widespread experiment of work-from-home by corporates and relatively lower proportion of employees working out of the business and IT parks, there has been no material impact on rental collections and occupancy till date.
BENGALURU | MUMBAI: The impact of Covid-19 pandemic-led changes in workplace usage patterns may have created a lot of buzz, but have not hit the rental yields as data from developers with significant portfolios of office leasing assets indicates that collection efficiency for billings in 2020 was more than 95%.
Despite the widespread experiment of work-from-home by corporates and relatively lower proportion of employees working out of the business and IT parks, there has been no material impact on rental collections and occupancy till date.
The revenue impact for FY21 is not expected to be huge given the tenant mix for Grade A office parks in India is dominated by strong parties, including large sized IT/ITeS companies and captive support service units of multinational corporations.
“Our rental collection numbers at 99% remain one of the highest and we witnessed a continuing trend of employees returning to offices in January. Many of our international occupiers are now bringing forward their back-to-office plans as there has been consistent decrease in caseload and also there’s positive news around vaccine roll out,” said Vikaash Khdloya, deputy CEO & COO, Embassy REIT.
While there has been an encouraging increase in leasing enquiries, say builders, it will take a few more months before they see lease conversions and return to pre-pandemic record leasing activity.
The recent earnings announcements from the tech sector has demonstrated the bringing forward of technology spends in the post pandemic world and this trend will continue to benefit the Indian office sector, say real estate experts.
