The average rent for retail space in the downtown area stood at $70.4 per square meter, and that in other areas at $31.7. The pandemic’s impact has also prompted some trade centers to delay their opening.

The JLL report said that the future of HCMC’s retail market would heavily depend on controlling Covid-19. Due to strong financial pressure and reliance on domestic demand, local brands will continue to rack up losses and find it hard to survive if the pandemic prolongs.

Meanwhile, foreign brands will be able to continue with their long-term plans but will have to limit or delay expansion projects in the short term, resulting in delayed opening of new trade centers including Socar Mall, the report said.

In the next six months, actual rentals of operational trade centers are likely to decline further, it added.

According to another real estate services provider Savills, average rents of office buildings in HCMC in the second quarter decreased 4 percent year-on-year to $31 per square meter due to Covid-19 impacts. Even grade A office properties designated for VIP customers saw rents decline three percent against the same period last year.

Most transactions in the first half of this year involved grade B office buildings in the city’s outskirts with good transport connections to the downtown area.

In the first half of the year, customers in the services sector accounted for 36 percent of the overall rental market, followed by information technology with 21 percent, and transport and logistics with nine percent. Demand for renting offices among e-commerce and fintech firms continued to increase.

Some 70 percent of rental transactions in the first half of this year were for areas of below 300 square meters, involving small and medium enterprises. The occupancy rates of grade B office properties in outlying areas that joined the market over the past 12 months averaged 50 percent.

HCMC saw an addition of nearly 2.4 million square meters of office space for leasing in the first half of the year, including 19,000 square meters from two new grade B buildings in Binh Thanh District and District 7.

Savills predicted that by 2024, some 60 percent of office properties for lease in HCMC would be located outside the downtown area.