Chennai in top 3 cities to see spurt in work space leasing

CHENNAI: Delhi NCR, Chennai, and Mumbai accounted for 77% of monthly leasing activity in January 2023. In terms of number of transactions, Mumbai remained the most active market, followed by Delhi-NCR, as per a report by JLL.

Samantak Das, chief economist and head of research and REIS, India, JLL, said the IT sector is presently facing slower employment and sluggish corporate growth expectations, and as a result, space take-up may be more benign as part of a course correction.

Given the evolving global economic scenario, other occupier categories are anticipated to maintain steady state, although with a minor downward bias in the short-term.

The IT/ITeS category still remained the largest driver of overall market activity in January, accounting for 28 per cent of total market activity, thanks to one large transaction and a few smaller ones. Whilst the actual numbers were identical m-o-m, BFSI and manufacturing made considerable advances in terms of share.

“January’s aggregate leasing activity was sluggish but on expected lines as this period coincides with the festive/holiday season and future business plans being put together with only spill over deals largely getting executed during this period. As future business projections are made under the shadow of global headwinds and the tech sector, facing a period of course correction is likely to be slow in space take-up, we expect that rising office occupancies and growth in other occupier segments should keep the momentum steady. However, an overall sluggishness is likely but more sustained trends of demand movement will be visible moving ahead over the course of the next 2-3 months,” he said.