It turns out that this is the culprit of many empty office buildings until they are sold

Jakarta –

Currently, there is a phenomenon of many shop houses (shops) to buildings empty office even sold. This is presumably because the supply of office buildings exceeds the level of occupancy.

Responding to this, Observer and Property Expert Steve Sudijanto stated that the trigger for this phenomenon was the Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, he explained several reasons for the empty office building.

First, due to decreased business volume and decreased work from office (WFO) volume. Second, the trend of working from anywhere or work from anywhere (WFA) which is currently rampant.

“With the habits that have occurred, to return employees to work 100% back at work, changing habits is no longer easy because all work arrangements can be done anywhere, work from anywhere. And that causes the volume of the work space to shrink,” he told detikcomSunday (29/1/2023).

According to him, with the shrinking volume of work space, the costs incurred to rent a place should also decrease.

“If the room is not used, then the empty room will become a burden due to paying for the service charge or common area maintenance. That’s why many companies are racking their brains, one thing is if you can rent it, rent it. Second, if you can sell it, sell it,” he said.

Steve explained that there are two types of building ownership, namely multi-owner buildings and single-owner buildings. Multi-owner building is a building that is owned by several parties, but there is still a kind of ‘chairman’ who owns the building. Meanwhile, a single owner building is a building that is owned by only one party.

According to him, single-owner buildings have more advantages in terms of renting buildings. This is because they have the flexibility to provide space according to the demands of prospective tenants.

“In terms of room demand, rental period, rental rate or rental fee it can be accommodated (by a single-owner building) compared to multi-owners strata title buildings, he doesn’t control the entire building. He has to report to (sort of) the head of the RT or RW ” he said.

Meanwhile, according to Anthony Leong, chairman of the Joint Indonesian Office Service Entrepreneurs Association (PERJAKBI), one of the sectors affected by the 2023 recession issue is the leasing office space sector in the Jakarta area and other big cities.

This is because many office tenants do not renew their contracts in 2023. In addition, there are also various building and office projects that will be completed in 2023, so that this is a big challenge for property entrepreneurs, especially office or building rental services.

However, he also said that there are opportunities for businesses in the field of building or office rental services. This is because currently the trend of smaller virtual offices and serviced offices is a solution for entrepreneurs who want to streamline from a large office to a small serviced office or for startups and SMEs to work and create.

“Virtual Office as well as Serviced Office services (small private offices) are the choice for novice entrepreneurs, startups and MSMEs and are a trend now and in the future, because they are quite flexible in using the various facilities in them and are efficient,” said Anthony quoted Sunday (29/1/2023).

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