SHAUN BRODIE
Director, Head of China Strategy
Research and East China Research
+86 21 2208 0088
IT’S ALL ABOUT BIG FOOTPRINTS
FOR DOMESTIC COMPANIES
Local technology companies have preferred suburban locations
from the start. In addition, these companies generally purchase
land and build their offices. Sometimes domestic technology
companies will purchase en bloc property if they deem that
it is well suited to their needs. With respect to China national
level hi-tech companies, their properties tend to be big in scale.
For instance, Alibaba just moved into their new 100,000 sq m
group corporate headquarters in Hangzhou earlier last year and
Tencent are in the process of constructing their 160,000 sq m
headquarters in Shenzhen.
OUTLOOK
Things are continuing to look up for the technology sector in
China. According to a recent China market survey conducted by
DTZ Research, many of our hi-tech clients remain positive on the
outlook for business growth in the mainland China region. In fact,
around 30% of those surveyed said they were actually preparing
to make further investments in the mainland.
Finally, going forward, as more and more quality office projects
are completed and handed over in suburban areas, we expect
successive waves of decoupling and decentralisation by hi-tech
sector companies to take place in the mature Tier 1 city markets.
•
To work in offices which are more similar to those which they
are accustomed to working in other international markets,
such as in offices with large floorplate sizes and offices which
offer recreational facilities in or close by.
Big cities like Beijing and Shanghai now have a comprehensive
public transportation network which embraces many urban
fringe locations. In fact, Shanghai, at around 500km of metro
line track, now has the greatest length of metro tracks of any
city in the world. With this in mind, when technology companies
do decide to decentralise, they have less to worry about than in
the past with regard to staff leaving because of transportation
inaccessibility of new office locations.
Source: DTZ Research
CHINA SELECTED CITIES — AVERAGE RENTAL AND
AVERAGE ANNUAL RENTAL GROWTH — Q4 2013
-15%
-10%
-5%
0%
5%
10%
15%
0.00
2.00
4.00
6.00
8.00
10.00
12.00
Beijing
Shanghai
Shenzhen
Guangzhou
Hangzhou
Chengdu
Nanjing
Tianjin
Wuhan
Xiamen
Shenyang
Changsha
Dalian
Qingdao
Xi’an
Chongqing
Average Rental (RMB/sq m/day)
Average Annual Rental Growth
RMB/sq m/day
DTZ | In Situ 29
