Hong Kong’s property developers are having to construct more flexible leasing offers to attract businesses, as the city faces more than 246 football fields of excess supply of office space by 2025.

With Covid-19 isolation policies tipping Hong Kong’s economy into recession, companies and banks such as Société Générale and Deutsche Bank have downsized in the territory over the past two years. Pandemic measures have also caused an exodus of foreign and local residents and paused the return of mainland Chinese groups, which had been expected to take up space.

“The leasing market, if [it’s] not at the bottom, it’s reaching the bottom, and will remain for some time. There’s a lot of space to absorb and digest,” said Paul Yien, executive director of office leasing advisory at JLL in Hong Kong. “There is a lot of new supply?.?.?.?which means rental will be under pressure.”