Beijing's office market saw a marginal rebound in the second quarter, with the CBD vacancy rate declining rapidly
Recently, Cushman & Wakefield released its Beijing Grade A Office Market Research Report for the second quarter of 2026. The data shows that Beijing's office market continued the adjustment trend of the first quarter, entering a phased bottoming range overall, with a volatile market pattern featuring continuously declining rents, deep regional differentiation, and structural demand recovery. The city's Grade A office stock remained stable at 13.68 million square meters. Leveraging advantages in industrial agglomeration, headquarters economy, and foreign investment layout, core business districts have demonstrated significantly stronger resilience against market downturns than the overall market, becoming the core stabilizer for Beijing's commercial office stock era.
In terms of rents, price adjustments in Beijing's office market continued to deepen in the second quarter. Report data indicates that the average office rent across the city reached 191.28 yuan/sq m/month, down 4.5% quarter-on-quarter and a substantial 13.8% year-on-year. Among them, rents in the five core business districts performed more robustly but still faced synchronized pressure, with an average rent of 220.75 yuan/sq m/month, declining 5.2% quarter-on-quarter and 14.3% year-on-year respectively. Their narrower decline outperformed the overall market, highlighting the prominent value stability of core assets.
The demand side saw marginal recovery, with the market's absorption capacity steadily improving. In the second quarter of 2026, there was no new supply entering Beijing's office market, leading to a continuously optimized supply-demand pattern. Coupled with the concentrated release of large-scale new leasing demand from enterprises, the city's net office absorption reached 63,412 square meters. Looking at the overall performance in the first half of the year, market demand is still in the recovery phase, with a cumulative net absorption of 77,303 square meters across the city, a notable drop compared to the same period last year. Demand differentiation in the five core business districts is more pronounced, with a net absorption of -14,554 square meters in the first half of the year, highlighting the characteristics of stock optimization and tenant iteration in core areas.
The vacancy rate trend presents a distinct pattern of regional differentiation. By the end of the second quarter, the city's office vacancy rate dropped 0.6 percentage points from the end of 2025 to 15.3%, with the absorption effect across the entire market gradually emerging. Affected by enterprise upgrading and format adjustment, the vacancy rate in the five core business districts rose slightly by 0.2 percentage points to 10.5% compared to the end of last year, maintaining a consistently low level and continuously highlighting the scarcity of high-quality core office assets.
From the perspective of transaction structure, declining rents forced the concentrated release of market replacement demand, with enterprise relocation and lease renewal becoming the two core driving forces of Beijing's office leasing market in the first half of the year. Data shows that enterprise relocation transactions accounted for 47.7% in the first half of the year, ranking first. Trends such as upgrading to quality assets at lower costs, replacing old buildings with new ones, and switching scattered offices to centralized headquarters have become mainstream. Lease renewal transactions took up 39.9%, ranking second, with leading stable enterprises sticking to core locations and maintaining stable office layouts to support the market's fundamentals. The two types of transactions together occupy nearly 90% of the market share, marking that Beijing's office market has fully entered a new cycle of stock replacement and quality improvement.
The industry demand structure remains stable, with core pillar industries maintaining a solid foundation. In the first half of 2026, the TMT, professional services, and financial industries continued to lead the leasing market, with their newly signed area accounting for 40.5%, 21.4%, and 16.0% respectively. The three industries together contributed over 70% of the leasing demand, serving as the core support for Beijing's commercial office market. The healthcare industry delivered a standout performance, ranking fourth with a 7.2% share and emerging as a new growth force. Focusing on high-quality demand from newly established enterprises and relocations in the second quarter, industrial concentration further increased. The leasing areas of the TMT, professional services, financial, and energy industries ranked top four, with proportions of 43.3%, 25.4%, 11.9%, and 5.8% respectively, indicating continuous expansion of demand from high-value-added and real-economy-related industries.
Deng Shanshan, Head and Deputy Managing Director of Project & Enterprise Services, North China at Cushman & Wakefield, analyzed that judging from market transaction cases and data trends in the first and second halves of 2026, the commercial office market in Beijing's CBD has demonstrated extremely strong cyclical resilience. The intensive tenant relocation activities in the current region are not a sign of demand outflow, but a quality upgrade and scale expansion within the core area. In the first half of the year, multiple large-scale leasing transactions covering thousands of square meters in the CBD were all driven by stock enterprises' iteration, upgrading, and scale expansion, directly driving the regional vacancy rate down from 12.57% in the first quarter to 11.77% in the second quarter, and continuously consolidating the core commercial office fundamentals.
She further stated that the advantage of industrial agglomeration is the core support for the CBD's long-term value. In the first half of the year, high-output tenant transactions from industries such as finance and professional services accounted for over 70%, and high-value-added functions including headquarters offices and international businesses continued to agglomerate, creating an irreplaceable industrial ecological barrier. At the same time, the continuous establishment and layout of foreign-funded institutions and heavy investment of long-term capital in core plots fully confirm the CBD's scarcity and long-term asset value as the capital's international business gateway. Compared with the overall market, core business districts have prominent advantages in rent resilience against declines. The current market adjustment is a normal cycle of rational industry clearance and stock optimization, and the long-term development fundamentals have not changed.