Rachel Leroy Few months ago London was the World’s most expensive place to setup and office space. Now, Hong Kong unseated London.
The cost of renting prime office space in Hong Kong soared 28 per cent during 2011 to £97.11 per sq ft a year due to the growing interest from banks to consolidate their presence in Asia region.
“Office occupiers remain cautious in many international markets, particularly with concerns over the strength of the global economy and the future of the eurozone resurfacing in recent months,” said Matthew Colbourne, senior international research analyst at Knight Frank.
“The pace of prime office rental growth in Europe slowed significantly in the second half of 2011, with rents remaining essentially flat in markets such as London’s West End and Frankfurt,” he added.
It is amazing just how much the growth of the economy can drive up the cost of living as well as the cost of doing business. Still, despite the high cost of office space in Hong Kong, the cost of labor continues to be close to as low as a third world country. And that includes skilled labor. I was recently outsourcing web marketing and software programming services to a company in that area for cheap.
Hi Alexander!
Unfortunately almost all profitable business are made with cheap labor.
Is the picture in your article actual office space in Hong Kong? I didn’t think that they had highway’s and things like we do here and the highway sign sure looks like it has a US interstate highway symbol on it. I was also told that Japan doesn’t have trees like that from an exchange student. I guess maybe Hong Kong could be different though right?
Hi Debra,
wow, you are very careful about reading my article! Thanks for the heads up! Actually the fist photo was from Miami…
Now, I upload the right photo with Hong Kong. Sorry!
So is this an accurate photo of the Hong Kong area? It looks almost post modern because every building seems to be aligned evenly and most of them are of the same or closely similar height. These buildings look like residential, water front condos. Every time I have seen Hong Kong on film or television, it looks over crowded and the scenes are usually night time shots where all the bright flashing lights dominate your attention.
I had no idea that Japan had space like this at all. We had a foreign exchange student stay with us for awhile and she was telling us how the city was and how everything is so close to each other and how they don’t have trees like we do in the US. This was a very interesting article and you have done a great job putting this together.
The economy and job market in Hong Kong must really be growing rapidly for that country to have surpassed London. I wonder if their sudden surge of jobs has anything to do with the lower cost of labor – both manual and skilled labor, especially technology jobs. The other thing which might be driving up the cost of living there is perhaps the tourism. Maybe more people are visiting Hong Kong; Maybe it’s becoming a hot spot.
Hong Kong doesn’t really have that much office space does it? Maybe that is why it is so expensive. Well that and the fact that the Japanese have to have the best most expensive stuff in their offices, that really would drive the price up. How much more does their office space go for than the most expensive office in the US? I hope that you post the answer to that one.
Do you think that Linda is right and the reason the cost of the office space is so much is because the cost of living and the tourism is driving it up? I know that a lot more people are visiting there from the US because the culture is so beautiful and the traditions that they have are great. I was there once a long time ago and things have sure changed.
I have always been interested in going to Hong Kong and Tokyo. Your blog was great and I love the night time shot of all those buildings. Hong Kong is very uniform in everything that do aren’t they? Are the offices that are available typically up high in the buildings or are they lower down because everyone wants the higher ones?
Wow that says a lot when you surpass London in cost of anything. London is one of those places I have no desire to go to. If the cost of living over there is so high then what must the prices for tourists be. You have a very interesting article here and I never thought any place would surpass London but for Hong Kong to do it is really amazing.