Leasing of office spaces in India’s top eight cities increase to 12.5M square feet

The sharp uptick can be attributed to economic recovery and workforce return to the office  

According to Knight Frank India, leasing of office spaces saw a sharp boost between July to September across India’s top eight cities at 12.5 million square feet, reported ET Realty.com. 

This increase was particularly due to the IT sector, including the recovery of the country’s economy and corporate workforces gradually returning to work-from-office. 

Based on Knight Frank’s India Real Estate Update – Q3 2021, the gross absorption of office space stood at 4.7 million square feet in the same period last year, and 3.6 million square feet in the previous quarter. 

In the eight India markets in Q3 2021, total office transactions have improved and hit 83 percent of the 2019 quarterly average level.  

Shishir Baijal, chairman and managing director at Knight Frank India, said, “The third quarter of 2021 saw the Indian office space market chart a robust recovery after the second wave of the COVID pandemic threatened to derail the market in the preceding quarter.” 

“The volumes achieved in this quarter are also statistically significant when benchmarked against the quarterly average of 2019, as office transactions were at a historic high in that year,” Baijal said.  

Data indicates that office space leasing in Mumbai jumped to 1.2 million square feet during July-September 2021 from one million square feet in the year-ago period.  

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Meanwhile, leasing transactions of the Delhi-NCR office market rose to two million square feet from 0.9, and Bengaluru’s office market saw an increase from 1.1 to 4.3 million square feet.  

In addition, Pune saw demand rising to one million square feet from 0.2 million square feet, Ahmedabad saw a rise to 0.3 from 0.1 million square feet, Chennai went up to 1.6 million square feet from 0.7, and the demand in Hyderabad surged to 2.1 million square feet from 0.5 million square feet.