The rate of offices standing empty in central Tokyo in November dropped for the first time since the pandemic began, an early signal that the worst could be over for the capital’s property market.
Vacancies fell by 0.12 percentage points to 6.35% in Tokyo’s five main business districts, real estate brokerage Miki Shoji Co. said on Thursday. Since hitting 1.49% in February 2020, the lowest since the country’s economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, vacancies have surged. The pandemic and uncertainty over the future of the conventional work environment led tenants to cancel existing leases or postpone signing new ones.
After the most recent virus state of emergency was lifted at the end of September, Japan has seen a recovery in activity, with COVID-19 cases and deaths among the lowest in the world. However, it remains to be seen if November’s data is the start of a new trend or a blip, with Miki Shoji pointing to the lack of major new buildings being opened in November among the reasons for the decline.