Check out which Grade A offices saw the highest drop in rent

A 3.4% dip per quarter.

According to Savills, thanks to slow and steady demand and limited supply in the last quarter, average rents of CBD Grade A offices tracked by the firm are stabilising with a modest quarter-on-quarter decline of 0.9% in Q4/2012.

Here's more from Savills:

Among all Grade A offices, prime office buildings (Grade AAA) those in the Marina Bay precinct again showed the highest quarterly drop of 3.4% in Q4 to S$10.0 per sq ft per month, resulting in a 14.9% fall for the whole year of 2012.

On the other hand, other Grade A buildings softened by 3.3% year-on-year on back of healthy occupancy rates. Consequently, the monthly rents of overall Grade A offices averaged at S$8.31 per sq ft in Q4/2012, falling by about 5.0% from S$8.72 per sq ft a year ago.

Vacancy rates for CBD Grade A offices improved from 8.1% in Q3/2012 to 7.8% in Q4/2012.

Better occupancies were recorded in most micro-markets, expect for the Beach Road / Middle Road and City Hall areas. The former edged up 0.5% to 4.2% by end-Dec while the latter deteriorated due to the vacant stock in the area more than doubling because Citibank’s vacated space in Millenia Tower.

In general, demand for CBD Grade A office space in 2012 had been healthy with a net take-up of almost 1.3 million sq ft for the whole year.

Net absorption, however, shrank slightly to 80,000 sq ft in the last quarter. As a guide, the net demand in 2012 is equivalent to Marina Bay Financial Centre Tower 3 or half of the Suntec City office towers.

Savills studied the availability of office floors1 each with 8,000 sq ft and above in Downtown Core Planning Area. For 2012, the amount of such floors has decreased from 153 or 2.3 million sq ft in early January to 79 or 1.2 million sq ft by end December, suggesting a net demand of 74 floors or 1.0 million sq ft.

Bulk of the absorption came from office buildings in the Raffles Place and Marina Bay areas. Across the board, many buildings in these two areas saw a net take-up of one to three of such floors, while the star performers are One Raffles Place Tower 2 (19 floors or 195,300 sq ft), Asia Square Tower 1 (8 floors or 166,300 sq ft) and Ocean Financial Centre (5 floors or 86,100 sq ft).

Tenants for these floors came from a broad base of industries. These include advertising firms, energy companies, financial services companies, human resources companies and fitness centre.

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