can someone post the huge article in todays fin review about office markets around Australia? really appreciate it.
one article is called- EMPTY FLOORS FILL UP AROUND COUNTRY

heres a bit
Vacancies are at a 4 year low . FIRST TIME IN 16 YEARS ALL CAP CITIES UNDER 10% VACANCY

MELBOURNE
Mentions melbourne is going well and next big project underway will be the 48,000sqm/27st 538-560 bourke st.
total vacancy-8.3%
total stock-3,431,682sqm
6month aborb-40,038sqm
new dev in 2006-161,819sqm wow

SYDNEY
sydney figures are finally under 10% vacancy (9.7%).
total stock-4,718,270sqm
6month absorb-121,631sqm- wow
new dev in 2006-81,104sqm

BRISBANE
total vacancy-3.5%
total stock-1.720,389sqm
6month absorb-35,784sqm
new dev in 2006-62,200sqm

PERTH
total vacancy-5.8%
total stock-1,308,319sqm
6 month absorb-47,887sqm
new dev in 2006-7,356sqm

ADE;AIDE
total vacancy-6.8%
total stock-902,263sqm
6 month new absorb-13,657sqm
new dev in 2006- 62,482sqm

overall things are looking up for all cap cities. should get some great new office towers in this cycle 2006-2010.

another story from Australian-

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/7199/boom5dh.jpg

Brisbane is ripe, I mean riippe for someone to come in and propose a big office tower. There is nothing of significance planned, apart from some minor 20 storey towers away from the golden triangle or or 10-20 storey components in mixed use towers like Vision.

Maybe 480 Queen Street as a resubmitted mixed use will have a large office component but that's just speculation at this point. Either way, it is about time we built some new big ones, because a growing city needs them to grow into.

Sounds like good news all round Mr C. We may even see more office development in Melbourne and Sydney in 2006/7! :D

Ouch, wouldn't have wanted to be Perth in 1992.

We still hurt. But look at us know. 99,000sqm filled up last year! 75,000 sqm left! and only 7,000 built in 2006 with 220,000 sqm planned for 2007-2010. Crazy that we may run out and need more after all this, we have two 70,000sqm towers proposed.

Then we have our resi boom starting. Good times lets hope they last. There is also two plans to get the swan pano's built.

National office market

Vacancies are at a four-year low - and landlords are gaining the upper hand, writes Robert Harley.

After six months of huge office take-up, the amount of empty space in office towers and suburban business precincts across the country is at its lowest point for four years - giving confidence to landlords and putting pressure on tenants.

More than 425,000 square metres of office space was absorbed by business and government - three times the average take-up - and the national vacancy rate dropped to 7.5 per cent.

"This has been an outstanding result for Australia's commercial office sector," said Property Council of Australia chief executive Peter Verwer.

"For the first time in 15 years, all CBD office markets around the country are now under 10 per cent vacant, and after years of oversupply, some markets even face the prospect of stock shortages for the forseeable future."

But Mr Verwer said not all markets had the same take-up, vacancy or supply-demand outlook.

On take-up, the CBDs of Sydney, Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane lead the way, while Parramatta, St Kilda Road and the Adelaide Fringe and Frame lag.

On vacancy, Canberra, Hobart, Brisbane and Perth are the tightest, while St Kilda Road, Parramatta, Chatswood, St Leonards and East Melbourne are still more than 10 per cent.

And on new supply, Brisbane and Perth offer little hope to tenants, Melbourne has yet to be fully tested and Canberra has so much new space under way that analysts are forecasting a 2008 vacancy of more than 15 per cent.

AMP Capital Investors' head of property, Andrew Bird, said what was happening in Perth and Brisbane was not happening in all markets. "We are positive on the office market, but in some cases the rhetoric is getting ahead of reality."

MPS Corporate Property Advisors principal Steve Urwin said: "Too many people consider the nation as a single market when it is a basket of different markets.

"Brisbane is without doubt tight, but still the landlords don't have the confidence to build on the Brisbane fringe without a precommitment.

"In Sydney CBD, premium is very tight, A-grade [is] getting tight, but below A-grade there is still a fair amount of stock available, and North Sydney is still a basket case.

"Melbourne has picked up a little bit, but from such a low base there are still some fantastic deals to be done in Melbourne. This year is still going to be a tenants' market, for those needing up to 5000 sq m."

Mr Verwer said the office markets remained sensitive to supply variables, and with 545,000 sq m of new CBD stock due this year, along with 157,000 sq m of non-CBD space, some non-CBD markets were vulnerable.

But compared with the past, new supply is still constrained.

Stockland managing director Matthew Quinn said rents simply did not justify new construction.

Go Perth!

Sydney has a potential 4 fairly big office projects with a total of about 120,000 sqm almost ready to go (given DA approvals etc). Whole bunch of smaller projects spotted around town too.

Seeing that Sydney is projected to absorb 120,000 sqm in the first 6 months of 2006 and that apparently 300,000 sqm is being sought by corporations....it is indeed looking good. Vacancy figure could always be lower.

Melbourne never tires. Still so much potential, and that's an understatement. Once again though, the vacancy figure could always be lower.

Brisbane @ 3.5%!! :eek:

City Square does not have a major tentant thats the problem. Large office developments are nolonger done without pre-commitments (Century City aside). CitySquare probably wont start till 2007 and Bishop see's main tower till 2009. Raine Square looks like a mid to late 2007 start.

Should be good. If the markets flatten out they shoukd rise again so thats the good news.

Maybee with the height restrictions leaving in the Brisbane CBD we might see Australia's tallest Office only highrise...I'd like to see that!!! With vacancy rates at 3.5% that is entirely possible!

Maybee with the height restrictions leaving in the Brisbane CBD we might see Australia's tallest Office only highrise...I'd like to see that!!! With vacancy rates at 3.5% that is entirely possible!

Perhaps but don't hold your breath.

I still think that a vacancy rate of just 3.5% is BAD for our cities economic development.

I mean it encourages VERY high rents.
It means that large companies who want to consolidate office space CANT.

The only ones who benefit are the property owners and the developers and they are sitting on their hands at the moment.

The day that we see a office tower knock over Central park or Rialto will be a long way away. They are huge buildings that will send vacancy rates through the roof.

Syd has 4.7 m sqm of CBD office space.
Mel has 3.4m sqm of CBD space.
The diff of 1.3 m sqm is equal to Perth's CBD space !!!!

What is the definition of "CBD" here i.e does Melb include Docklands + Southbank and is SYD just the area bounded by Circular Quay in the north, Macquarie St to the east, Goulburn St to the south and Cockle Bay to the west ???

Melbourne includes Docklands but not Southbank.

Melbourne+Southbank = around 3.7 million I think.

Some more info on Brisbane for brisbanites, we really need some quality Grade A new towers in the CBD, especially for bigger firms, and there isn't much room left that's for sure. If you ask me a 350m mixed use or all office tower would go down a treat!

Brisbane vacancy rates at record low: Property Council
Thursday 09 February 2006
A new report reveals Brisbane has the tightest property market of all state capital cities in the nation, driven by a booming economy, strong jobs growth and a previous reluctance to invest in office developments.

The Property Council's Office Market Report shows Brisbane's CBD and near-city vacancy rates slipped to the lowest levels on record for the six months to January 2006.

At 3.5% (CBD) and 4.2% (near-city), vacancy rates continue a fall that began in 1993, but accelerated in recent times with rates down from 5% (CBD) and 7.5% (near-city) just one year ago.

Property Council executive director Robert Walker says: "Queensland is the place to invest."

"We are seeing solid growth in rental returns for the first time in a decade. Combined with growing demand for stock, and vacancy at or below the pivotal 4%, now is the time to progress projects.

"Businesses desperate for space may feel some comfort from the 69,550 square metres of additional space coming on line in 2006 – the largest amount in a single year since 2001.

"But the truth is growing demand means conditions are unlikely to ease much before 2008 or beyond, and large tenants looking to move in the market in 2006 will not be provided with much opportunity."

Walker says while Premium, A and B grade stock availability is very tight, C grade stock is another story.

"It is with C grade stock that we have seen the trend towards increasing vacancy continuing – rising 1.3 percentage points to 11%," he says.

"This may well be temporary, however, as it largely results from tenants upgrading their space, and is unlikely to continue until new stock is added to the higher categories."

Walker says unrelenting population growth, a strong diverse economy bolstered by solid mining and agricultural returns, set Queensland apart from most states except perhaps Western Australian, and has meant jobs growth.

"For every additional person engaged, employers need to find an additional 16 square metres. Queensland population growth continues at 2% in 2005. Employment grew by 5.2% over the year to June 2005," he says.

Cities By Absorbtion:

SYDNEY......121,631sqm
PERTH.........47,887sqm
MELBOURNE...40,038sqm
BRISBANE.....35,784sqm
ADELAIDE.....13,657sqm

Sydney and Melbourne seem to be able to build and fill without too much drama and at a fairly consistent rate, and Brisbane seems to have been fairly consistently dropping in vacancy rates and people are saying that until Brisbane gets more space it doesnt leave much opportunity for large tennants to move into the market. Now Ive been reading similar reports for at least a year now, and what I dont understand is why no developer has acted on this with at least a 200m tower, especially with the relaxed height limitations.

I know the current trend seems to be for mixed use towers for Brisbane and I imagine the council is encouraging this, but I would have thought BCC and State Govt would be encouraging a new big office only tower. Maybe they are and I just havent heard about it.

Any thoughts........

OK just read JayTs thread on rumoured new 300m office tower in Brisbane, so that kind of answers my questions!!!!!

ok, more stuff from todays PROPERTY AUSTRALIA!

http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/9018/boomtime7bv.jpg

http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/2707/boomtime29mv.jpg

http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/1566/boomtime37zv.jpg

Brisbane has some new office towers about to commence construction:

480 Queen St - who knows?
400 George St - More than 30,000m2
Vision Tower - 27,000
Northbank Plaza - 26,000
27 Tank Street - 21,000
Central Plaza 3 - 11,000 (big render in todays CM)

The rest of the article that JayT refers to also mentioned that Brisbane last year had an absorption level of 515,000 m2!!! This would be close to, if not, a world record and I imagine difficult for one of the Chinese mega cities to achieve! Nothing like making up numbers and publishing!!! I suppose it is of no consequence to the 99.95% of readers who will have no idea how wrong this figure is!

^
Yes, I saw that yesterday....pretty bad

Brisbane has some new office towers about to commence construction:

480 Queen St - who knows?
400 George St - More than 30,000m2
Vision Tower - 27,000
Northbank Plaza - 26,000
27 Tank Street - 21,000
Central Plaza 3 - 11,000 (big render in todays CM)

Northbank Plaza and 27 Tank Street are refurbishments of existing buildings. I'm wondering if the CM even knows about the proposed increase to the office space in vision.....

just on residential news
theres a huge article in todays fin rev about booming docklands. it mentions how its still selling quite well while the CBD is not.
Dockland population has gone from 300 in 2002 to 6300 in 2006 and eventually reach 20,000 in 20 years.

At last: Docklands slowly comes to life
Mathew Dunckley and Mark Phillips
23 February 2006
Australian Financial Review

Ten years ago, it was a wasteland of empty warehouses that even taxi drivers feared to go near. But today, following $3.7 billion of investment, Melbourne's Docklands is a bustling residential and commercial precinct with a daily population of 32,800.

Docklands is still a work in progress, and some scepticism remains about its prospects as dozens of high-rise apartments sit unsold.

But the more recent transformation has silenced most of the critics who a decade ago voiced doubts about the wisdom of proceeding with the largest urban revitalisation project in Australia.

From the sports stadium, which celebrated its 10 millionth patron in August, to the rows of apartment towers in New Quay and Yarra's Edge, to the acclaimed National Australia Bank HQ in Victoria Harbour, Docklands is taking shape as it moves towards eventually doubling the size of Melbourne's central business district.

"You couldn't stop Docklands today if you tried," says John Tabart, the outgoing chief of VicUrban, which manages the precinct on behalf of the state government.

"It has mixed use and is a high-quality venue. Much of Melbourne doesn't realise that yet."

The connection of Bourke and Collins streets could be just a few years away, altering Melbourne's grid street system in a way never envisaged by the city's original planners and symbolically linking Docklands to the CBD.

Located on partly reclaimed swampland at the west of the CBD, Docklands was Melbourne's original port, operating from the early 1900s until the mid-1990s, made obsolete by the requirements of container ships.

It begins at Spencer Street Station and Batman's Hill - the highest point of early Melbourne - extending to the Bolte Bridge.

Running parallel to each other through the CBD, Collins and Bourke streets have already been extended into Docklands and will eventually meet as the apex of a triangle deep in the Victoria Harbour precinct.

Mark Birrell, who was major projects minister in the first Kennett government when the Docklands vision was formalised, admits to an "ongoing parental interest" in the precinct. "This was a site that taxi drivers would not take you to for fear of the consequences," he says.

"It's [now] become a must-visit place for tourists, and people enjoy the restaurants and literally thousands of people are living there."

Docklands is one of the world's largest urban revival projects.

According to VicUrban's figures, investment at Docklands is running at an average of $500 million a year.

About $3.7 billion of development has been completed or is in construction. It hosts more than 6000 permanent residents, 6500 daily office commuters and averages 15,000 daily visitors, according to VicUrban.

When completed by about 2020, the Docklands development will have in effect doubled the size of Melbourne's city centre.

The doubters remain.

Ten years into what will be a 20- to 25-year project on a 200 hectare site on the western edge of Melbourne's CBD, the pace of development has slowed. Huge swaths of land are still barren, and the precinct has borne the brunt of criticism for the overheated residential property market of the early 2000s.

Little apartment building is planned for the near future as the market still absorbs the 2654 already built and 696 under construction.

At the beginning of October, the vacancy rate for Docklands apartments was 3.5 per cent and average weekly rent was $455, according to VicUrban.

VicUrban says there have been 144 resales of Docklands apartments for an average price of $517,000 and annual capital growth of 5.9 per cent, but 22 per cent have lost value. Forty per cent of sales have resulted in gains of between zero and 5 per cent a year, while 22 per cent lost value.

The area has received a boost in the past two days, with the state government awarding the contract for a $1 billion convention centre on Docklands' doorstep and also announcing in-principle support for a $60 million ice-skating centre at Waterfront City.

The precinct also received a lift last year when ANZ Bank announced it was looking for a new 80,000 square metre campus-style office space to house most of its Melbourne operations.

Victoria Harbour is regarded as a frontrunner for that deal and is "the jewel in the crown", according to Docklands general manager Michael Hynes.

Lend Lease has already taken a gamble on that status by beginning construction of its first residential tower, Dock 5, in the middle of last year at the height of negativity towards Docklands.

Lend Lease Victoria Harbour project director Maurice Cococcia acknowledges that the pace of sales at the project will not match those experienced by MAB and Mirvac who were selling at the height of the boom.

"Most of the developers have probably only been here for six or seven years and in that short period, [to have the current level of development] in a relatively untried and untested part of Melbourne is a great testament to that strategy," he says.

Despite fears in the early days about contamination, the biggest logistical issue has been coping with the Coode Island silt, which he says required more engineering work on building foundations.

Certainly not everything at Docklands has been a success. The $110 million Central City film studios, a private consortium chaired by movie distributor Sino Guzzardi, in the most north-western precinct, opened eight months late in February 2004, $7.4 million over budget and without electricity.

Since then, it has been the setting for the features Hating Alison Ashley, The Extra and the Nicolas Cage feature, Ghost Rider, but the jury is still out on whether the studios will attract enough top local and international productions to be viable. Nevertheless, a $7 million expansion began last year.

For the developers who moved into the early stages of the project, Docklands was a huge gamble.

"It was certainly pioneering territory," says Paul McDonald, chief executive officer of MAB Corporation, which will eventually invest more than $1 billion in its New Quay precinct at the northern end of Docklands.

Tabart says the well-publicised stoushes with unsuccessful developers were the low points of his 10-year reign but he stands by the authority's approach.

"Our agreements have to be hard-nosed business arrangements that require a developer to build at a time when there is no market. They win a bid with a design and a price and a time frame; [if they miss] they can lose their rights over the land."

Now, almost at the halfway stage of the Docklands experiment, all the precincts are ahead of their required development timetables, he says.

Demographer Bernard Salt of KPMG says Docklands' future is assured because of major social changes that are undermining the traditional nuclear family.

"Docklands does serve a niche in the sense that it offers something that has not been offered previously in Melbourne - water-based apartment accommodation adjacent to the CBD," he says.

Damian Trytell, principal of the Mecca restaurant group, says that in just three years, Docklands has become one of Melbourne's leading restaurant and entertainment precincts. His Livebait and Mecca Bah were among the first venues to open at New Quay in November 2002.

"We have generally run 27 per cent above what we budgeted in the early stages of our five-year business plan," he says.

Only one business at Docklands has been forced to close - a nightclub that Trytell says was inappropriate for the precinct.

The Docklands Authority and its successor were required to borrow to fund infrastructure under their establishing legislation - that debt stands at $150 million. Providing that infrastructure was a key to luring private investment, Tabart says.

The first project to use the model was the $400 million stadium. The then Docklands Authority assisted with $65 million worth of bridges and roads.

The roofed stadium - now known as Telstra Dome - is home to the AFL and has given Docklands a strong identity as the western fringe of the CBD through the exposure gained from the close to 10 million football supporters who have passed through its gates.

There is bipartisan political support for the project, although the Liberal opposition continues to criticise the merger of the Docklands Authority with the Urban Land Authority to form VicUrban. VicUrban believes that over 20 years Victoria will make a profit on Docklands.

The opposition's major projects spokeswoman, Louise Asher, says some delays and cost overruns have not affected the Liberal Party's backing of the development.

But there are those who do not share VicUrban's optimism. A professor of architecture at Melbourne University, Miles Lewis, a long-time sceptic of Docklands, says the precinct's shape is an opportunity lost.

The Bolte Bridge bridge was built too low to allow for cruise ships so, for example, unlike Sydney's Circular Quay, tourists cannot be dropped in the heart of Melbourne's new waterfront.

He also describes the building design as "low-rate".

Asked to nominate a positive, Lewis cites the extension of Collins and Bourke streets and the quality of the restaurants.

But Mark Birrell remains an enthusiastic believer in the Docklands and dismisses criticism of the project. "It's just the same thing every year, but they sell, they work and are in the high end of quality."
----------------------------

Rise of towers follows decline of nuclear family
Mark Phillips
23 February 2006
Australian Financial Review

The dozen or so high-rise apartment buildings in Melbourne's Docklands precinct stand as monuments to the power of the investment property boom of the first years of the decade.

To critics, the apartment towers symbolise everything that was wrong with a property bubble fuelled by low interest rates.

As the Melbourne apartment market began to head southwards in the middle of 2003, it unleashed a flurry of litigation by investors who had bought off-the-plan apartments at Docklands.

Mirvac, developer of the Yarra's Edge precinct, bore the brunt of the legal action.

But the developer yesterday celebrated victory in an important test case when Justice Kim Hargrave in the Victorian Supreme Court dismissed a claim by a Melbourne man that he had been induced into buying an apartment by misrepresentations and unconscionable conduct by Mirvac.

Docklands apartment sales peaked in 2001 and 2002 at the same time as the broader Melbourne market, according to research by Charter Keck Cramer.

A total of 1549 apartments were sold off the plan in the Docklands precinct in those two years, making up just over a quarter of all apartment sales in Melbourne's central city region that year. But in line with the overall apartment market, off-the-plan sales in Docklands have fallen dramatically since the second half of 2003. Just 44 were sold in the first half of 2005, for example. In the middle of last year, Docklands had the highest stock overhang of completed apartments in any central Melbourne precinct, with 155 apartments unsold.

Between 2002 and now, the precinct's residential population has grown from 300 to about 6300, and will eventually reach 20,000.

To some extent, the growth of residential living in Docklands has reflected the shift towards inner-city apartment living in Melbourne.

Property analyst Charter Keck Cramer estimated that there were 19,750 off-the-plan residential apartment sales in the five inner-city precincts - the CBD grid, CBD north, Docklands, Southbank, and St Kilda Road - between 1994 and the first half of 2005. They peaked in 2001, when there were 3494 sales, 747 of them in Docklands.

Sales have since fallen as the market underwent a correction. But demographer Bernard Salt from KPMG said Docklands apartment living was an unstoppable force over the long term as the traditional nuclear family declined as a social institution.

The Docklands developers understood this, even if critics did not.

"As we move more and more towards singles and couples and DINKs [double income, no kids] and gays and one-parent families and empty nesters, you would have to expect the housing stock in Melbourne to reflect that," he said.

"Just as there's entire suburbs given over to the family, there needs to be the invention of entire suburbs given over to the new social institutions and that gives rise to places like Docklands and Southbank."

The director of residential prestige and projects at Charter Keck Cramer, Anthony Rohan, said concerns about an oversupply of apartments in Docklands were overstated, and he believed rental yields were improving for investors.

At the beginning of October, the vacancy rate for Docklands apartments was 3.5 per cent and average weekly rent was $455, for an estimated gross rental yield of 4.3 per cent, according to state urban development agency VicUrban.

Yields and weekly rents have fallen over the past three years as more stock has become available in the precinct.

In 2004, average rents were $486 a week and yields were 4.9 per cent; and in 2003 the yield was 5.6 per cent from weekly rents of $493.

Mr Rohan also disputed the common perception of Docklands as being dominated by investors, pointing to prestige buildings like Mirvac's Tower 5, which was almost all sold to owner-occupiers.

However, because of existing remnant stock and high construction costs, Mr Rohan anticipated a slow take-off of new residential construction over the next few years.

Lend Lease has decided to plough ahead. Its Dock 5 building is now 80 per cent sold ahead of completion early next year, and it will launch a $40 million, nine-storey residential development, known as Mosaic, this month.

The first apartment building to be completed at Docklands was MAB Corporation's Arkley tower at New Quay in late 2001. New Quay now consists of about 1000 apartments in six buildings as part of an overall mixed use development with an eventual value of $1 billion.

Paul McDonald, MAB'S chief executive, was unconcerned at the potential for an apartment glut at Docklands. He said population growth dictated that Melbourne would need about 25,000 new dwellings a year for the next decade.

"The fundamentals of population growth are there and we're optimistic," he said. "I would expect most people to be planning for their next tower and readying for the upturn."

Hanging over the residential market are the mandatory milestones built into the development agreements with the Docklands Authority to ensure the precinct continues to be built at a steady pace.

Fortunately for the developers, there is some flexibility to allow for fluctuations in demand.

"Obviously, the residential market has cooled somewhat, and [developers'] milestones are catching up to their progress, and that's something we will be assessing," Docklands general manager Michael Hynes said.

Off-the-plan apartments in Docklands have averaged $539,000 since 2000, for a total sales value of $1.4 billion.

An analysis by VicUrban of 144 resales of Docklands apartments found average annual capital growth of 5.9 per cent. Forty per cent of sales have resulted in gains of between zero and 5 per cent a year; 22 per cent lost value. The average resale price was $517,000.

Research by Australian Property Monitors found there were 123 apartment sales in the Docklands postcode (3008) in 2005 for a median price of $458,000. The median price fell by 7.5 per cent last year. Based on intentions by buyers at the time of purchase, 59 per cent of the apartments were investments.

MAB has also detected a growing trend of owner-occupiers moving to Docklands now they can see the finished product. Mr McDonald said they now averaged about 30 per cent across the entire precinct.

"That's a function of people visualising it as an attractive place to live," he said.

Margaret Crump, a resident at Mirvac's Yarra's Edge, moved from the eastern suburbs three years ago to cut commuting time.

"I can't imagine living anywhere else, I'm not a gardener," she said.

Interestingly it talks a bit about NAB's office and how staff are pissed at the distance of it from the station ( ie walk time to and from work), the cost of buying lunch and the general lack of services down there. No doubt this will all improve over time though. Also mentions ANZ's search for space including Docklands.

The finance and insurance sector expanded its office space requirements strongly in 2005 after contracting significantly in 2003 and 2004, which has seen a surge in tenant demand in the Sydney CBD office leasing markets in late 2005, according to Jones Lang LaSalle Research.

Demand in other capital cities was driven by the accounting and property/business services sectors in Melbourne, mining and state government sectors in Brisbane and, not surprisingly, the mining and resources sector in Perth and Federal Government in Canberra.

Jones Lang LaSalle Research shows strong tenant demand in all CBD office markets in 2005 (515,000sqm) allowing national net absorption to reach its highest level since the IT boom in 2000, with Sydney recently leading the charge with over 94,000sqm of absorption in the December 2005 quarter alone.

According to Jones Lang LaSalle’s Head of Research, Kathryn Matthews, “Over 2003 and 2004 in all moves over 1,000sqm there was a contraction of more than 100,000sqm in the Sydney CBD by large users in the finance & insurance industry,” she says. “This finally bounced back in 2005, with the sector taking-up around 27,000sqm in large moves over the year. This included 11,000sqm of pure expansion space for Macquarie Bank in Q4 at 135 King St and Deutsche Bank’s 4000sqm expansion upon relocation to their new premises at 126 Phillip Street.”

Jones Lang LaSalle Research analysis of large moves in the Sydney CBD also show that the education, health and community services sector has also had strong demand for space over 2005, as has the property & business services and legal sectors. It also shows that IT demand in the Sydney CBD bounced back strongly in 2004, and remained positive in 2005.

“Like Sydney, Melbourne has seen much stronger demand from the finance & insurance sector in 2005 and also a similar recovery in IT demand over the past two years,” says Ms Matthews. “However, it is the accounting and property & business services sectors that have really driven office demand in the Melbourne CBD in 2005, with many upgrading to newly completed space.”

Some of the major transactions by accounting and property & business services firms in Melbourne over 2005 include Ernst & Young and Maunsell expanding by 8,300sqm and 2,200sqm respectively in the newly completed 8 Exhibition Street, and William M Mercer expanding by 4,300sqm in another new project at 11 Exhibition Street.

“Net absorption in Perth and Brisbane has been exceptionally strong over the past year, which should not come as any great surprise as the economies of both Queensland and Western Australia have been riding high on the back of the resources boom,” says Ms Matthews.

“Brisbane has seen exceptionally strong demand from the agriculture & resources sector in 2005. Demand from the finance & insurance and property & business services sector has also been very strong reflecting a large degree of flow-on demand from the buoyant commodity markets.”

Major resource-related deals in the Brisbane CBD market over the past year include two expansions by RIO Tinto into 6,300sqm at 215 Adelaide Street and a further 1,000sqm at the Brisbane Club Tower, while Worley Parsons expanding by 1,800sqm in Comalco Place and Alcan Engineering took a further 1,000sqm at 445 Queen Street after already expanding by 4,500sqm in 2004.

“The Queensland State Government has had exceptionally strong demand for space in the Brisbane CBD over the past few years. This in part reflects the restructuring of several major departments, but it is also symptomatic of a growing demand for public goods and services due to the state’s particularly strong population growth rate,” she says.

Perth has also experienced particularly strong demand over the past two years as result of the commodity boom, both directly from resources companies and indirectly through supporting property & business services firms. Like Brisbane, State Government demand has been buoyant in Perth, while the Perth CBD has also experienced the pick-up in IT demand seen in Sydney and Melbourne.

Examining the aggregated break-up of demand across all markets, CBD and suburban office markets, illustrates the importance of Federal Government office demand in 2005, which has largely been concentrated in Canberra and also in some of the fringe and suburban markets in the major capital cities.

This very strong Federal Government demand in Canberra has been largely responsible for the National Capital currently holding the lowest vacancy rate in Australia (2.4%).

Likewise, the construction & manufacturing sector is not overly prominent in most of the major CBD markets, but ultimately a large source of demand across all markets in 2005. As is evident across the major CBD office markets, finance & insurance and property & business services demand has been very strong across the country.

While nationally demand from the IT&T sector was still strong in 2005, it was around half that of 2004 when the sector experienced a very strong rebound.

JLL

good news for sydney in latest review in todays fin rev!
can someone post it?
Melbourne has most full floors available with 161 floors of office space.
Sydney has 127 floors
brisbane has 18 floors
perth has 8 floors (wow, they can expect a boom indeed)
ect

plus theres another story on how Sydney finally attracting developers!!
anyone have access to financial review? page 50/51

good news for sydney in latest review in todays fin rev!
can someone post it?
Melbourne has most full floors available with 161 floors of office space.
Sydney has 127 floors
brisbane has 18 floors
perth has 8 floors (wow, they can expect a boom indeed)
ect

plus theres another story on how Sydney finally attracting developers!!
anyone have access to financial review? page 50/51

Actually the article said Perth had 18 floors and Brisbane only had 8 floors left.

Actually the article said Perth had 18 floors and Brisbane only had 8 floors left.

Floors is a great way to count space.

here it is
http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/6499/dsc022057yd.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/931/dsc022062sh.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

ta zach!
yes things are looking good for perth & brisbane.sydney finally seeing the light.

Hope this definately means some tall ones for Perth and Brisbane. One very tall tower in each of these two cities probably wouldn't make much of a dent at all. To me...economically vaible!!!

^ brisbane will get some big ones .
perth has already a large one just started (Century City).It will pave way for next generation of skyscrapers!

If i had a dollar for everytime there was newspaper article called "tall storeys".....

The city news in Brisbane had an article that was titled: "BCC are stuck between a rock and a tall storey" Talking about the need to finish of the draft entertainment code for the valley before organising the relaxation of height limits there.

But I agree, newspapers just really need to be original sometimes!!

http://img449.imageshack.us/img449/9513/apriloff0sy.jpg
http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/1027/apriloff25zm.jpg
http://img449.imageshack.us/img449/4944/apriloff38xc.jpg
http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/4291/apriloff42ci.jpg

Interesting thread....

ANZ bank is looking at new HQ for 80000 sqm .. this will be huge additions in Melbourne market.

Anyone know about what happen with the corner of King and Bourke st development ?

I guess there are few project in pipelines in Melbourne
SX second tower
Freshwater place 3rd tower
568 Collins st

Bit dissapointing that there are no very tall buildings planned ie 220m +

unless anyone know ?

^ no big office towers planned for melb atm
ANZ are going lowrise in Docklands.
the Grand central is about to start (120m) and maybe sx2 (93m)
not sure when next 150m+ will commence?

sydney is finally hitting it straps
should get some big ones soon.

http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/6356/cbdlead5ye.jpg

All the property pages are talking of the Sydney resurgence, so it's definitely looking like we'll be seeing a few new cranes on the horizon. It's ripe!

I like how the above article inlcudes the word "only" for the newly completed (A-Grade) office towers.

^ no big office towers planned for melb atm
ANZ are going lowrise in Docklands.
the Grand central is about to start (120m) and maybe sx2 (93m)
not sure when next 150m+ will commence?

sydney is finally hitting it straps
should get some big ones soon.



When did ANZ make its announcment???

^^They haven't, although it's rumoured they'll set up shop in Village Docklands. There are 2 office towers over 150m in Melbourne but they are waiting for a pre-commitment; 565 Collins (170m) and the Prudential site (150-200m). The latter won't be going ahead for a few years though or so I'm told.

oops

oops?

We just need like one 120 story office tower in Australia!

im trying to think when we will get a out next 50storey+ office tower in Australia?
Sydney has 2 maybe start next year. 188m /50st John Boyd and 33 bligh which although has 25storeys, its as hig h as a 50storey being 188m.
Brisbane is going "mixed use", so might not see a large all -office tower for a while but never know.Perth might suprise everyone with a big office bldg.

Culwulla

What do you mean of

the Grand central is about to start (120m) ???

is it one in corner of King and Bourke sts ??

^^^ NW corner of William and Bourke Streets

^^^ NW corner of William and Bourke Streets


Sorry mate =-- what is NW .?

anyone know about the building which is going on in corner of King and Bourke sts ?

NW = North West.

NW = North West.

thanks dude !

resi still stuffed up in sydney and melb for a few years yet.

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/3383/resimarket8ud.jpg
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