On December 7th, international real estate services and investment company CBRE released a report stating that strategic emerging industries have become a growing demand area for high-quality office buildings and research and development facilities in China, especially in first and second tier cities with abundant talent resources, which are the focus of enterprise site expansion. According to data from CBRE, the proportion of newly leased office buildings in China by strategic emerging industry enterprises has increased from 24.6% in 2019 to the current 32.5%, with a proportion of over 70% in the Beijing Shanghai Business Park.
Talent resources are a necessary prerequisite for the development of strategic emerging industries, and the office location trajectory of strategic emerging industry enterprises is highly consistent with the distribution of talent resources. According to data from CBRE, 84% of the newly leased office space of strategic emerging industry enterprises has been located in seven major cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Wuhan, and Xi'an since 2019. Among them, Beijing and Shanghai maintain an absolute lead, with new rental areas accounting for more than half.
In terms of warehousing and logistics, the report shows that the domestic high standard warehouse market is experiencing a phased supply peak, with an expected new supply of over 12 million square meters in 2023, but it will quickly fall back to a reasonable level of about 6-6.5 million square meters in the next two years. Given the resilience of rental demand, the supply-demand balance in the market will gradually improve from the second half of 2024 to 2025, especially in the first tier cities and surrounding satellite markets where tenants focus on expanding, which are expected to achieve stable rental growth first.
According to the 2023 China Warehouse and Logistics Tenant Survey by CBRE, 82% of surveyed logistics companies stated that they plan to further expand in first tier metropolitan areas in the next three years, and prioritize location factors such as transportation facilities, consumers and end markets, as well as upstream and downstream manufacturers and suppliers over warehouse rental levels. It is worth mentioning that among the most urgent warehouse configurations that tenants want to increase or improve in the future, rooftop photovoltaics (45%) and new energy vehicle charging facilities (44%) rank in the top two, and the green nature of warehouse logistics is increasingly valued by tenants.