The ViewWhy ‘death of the office’ is unlikely in China, even amid risk of further lockdowns
- While the popularity of hybrid working in the UK and US has tested the resiliency of traditional offices, corporate culture has been slower to change in China
- Demand for office space remains strong, even as citywide lockdowns force firms to take flexible working more seriously
It has been three months since the British government announced the end of all remaining pandemic-related restrictions in England as part of its “living with Covid” plan. Even the legal requirement to self-isolate after testing positive for the virus was scrapped.
In the US, where most states and cities have dropped their indoor mask mandates as part of a strategy to treat the virus as endemic, average occupancy rates in 10 leading office markets tracked by Kastle Systems stood at 43 per cent on May 11, and were as low as 39 per cent in New York.
The findings of a global survey carried out in February by WFH Research, a project run by a group of American universities that studies working arrangements and preferences, revealed that Britain had one of the highest numbers of paid working days from home. Several Asian countries, however, were among the nations that had the lowest.
Since the pandemic erupted, one of the most notable trends in the commercial real estate industry has been the resilience and appeal of traditional offices in Asia. This is most apparent in China, which accounted for two-thirds of net take-up in Asia-Pacific office markets last year, data from Cushman & Wakefield shows.
While the relatively strong performance of the region’s office markets is attributable to a host of factors, the limited disruption caused by the shift to homeworking – with the exception of Australia which has mirrored trends in Britain and America – partly explains why there has been a lot less uncertainty over the future of the sector in Asia.