Megaworld Corp. on Monday said its office leasing business grew 12 percent in January to September despite the imposition of tough quarantine restrictions during the period.
The company said its office take-ups reached 214,000 square meters for the period compared with its target of 191,000 square meters, or the same figure of office leasing that it achieved last year.
About a third of these leases were new deals mostly in Uptown Bonifacio, McKinley Hill, Southwoods City and Davao Park District.
The other 64 percent of the leases were renewals mostly from business process outsourcing companies in Eastwood City, Uptown Bonifacio, McKinley West, McKinley Hill and Iloilo Business Park.
Around 79 percent of the new sign-ups are from the information technology and business process management sector.
Other new lease transactions were also recorded in Eastwood City, McKinley West and Mactan Newtown during the period.
“It is exciting to note that several tenants opted to retain their spaces, and even expanded during the pandemic. The demand still remains despite earlier speculations that the work-from-home arrangements will lead to massive vacancies,” said Roland Tiongson, first vice president of Megaworld Premier Offices.
In Iloilo, United States-based BPO company Nearsol, renewed its almost 3,000 square meters of office space in Three Techno Place, and also took new covering around 2,000 square meters in the nearby Two Fintech Place.
In Southwoods City in Biñan, Laguna, US-based BPO Valor Global Inc. took three floors of Southwoods BPO Tower 1 covering almost 8,000 square meters. It also took another three floors of One Campus Place in McKinley Hill covering almost 6,400 square meters.
“With the eased restrictions and the re-opening of our borders for international travelers, we are optimistic that we will be able to achieve a better full-year performance of our office leasing business this year,” said Tiongson, who is also the president of MREIT Fund Managers Inc.
Megaworld is the largest office landlord in the country with around 1.4 million square meters of leasable office space inventory.
Within the next 10 years, Megaworld is also building more office towers in new townships like The Upper East in Bacolod City; Maple Grove in General Trias, Cavite; Capital Town in San Fernando, Pampanga; and Northwin Global City in Marilao-Bocaue, Bulacan.