By MARISSA LAGUE
Rising rents and a shrinking number of tenancies to select from is driving small businesses out of the CBD in at least three cities, according to Servcorp.
The serviced office provider says small businesses looking for well positioned space in Perth, Sydney and Brisbane - Australia's top three cities for commercial rents, according to the Property Council, have been the hardest hit.
According to the Property Council figures, businesses in Perth and Sydney will soon be paying more than $830sqm while Brisbane businesses will be paying around $700sqm.
Servcorp executive director Taine Moufarrige said the tighter office market conditions had led to an increase in demand for serviced offices. It forecasts growth of more than 20 per cent this year in Australia and says demand is especially strong for its virtual office service. "Our virtual office business is growing strongly, especially for small to medium-sized enterprise as they can get all the business infrastructure without having to invest or sign a lease," Mr. Moufarrige said.
Servcorp has about 35,000 clients worldwide that are using virtual office space and says about 70 per cent of these businesses are small to medium-sized enterprises or start ups.
About 65 per cent of Servcorp's clients using serviced office space are bigger firms wanting a branch or a corporate or a project office and the other 35 per cent of users are small-to-medium start-ups.
"We've seen our mature floor occupancy across the country rising steadily since October 2010. Sydney and Perth have been showing particularly high rates of occupancy consistently hovering above 90 per cent during the past year."
Source: Western Australian 29/06/2011
