(Yicai) April 25 -- China’s office building market recovered in the first quarter of the year, buoyed by the finance, technologies, and professional service industries, according to a report from property consultancy firm Jones Lang LaSalle.

The office building net absorption in 20 of China’s 40 major cities jumped 34 percent to 627,000 square meters in the three months ended Feb. 29 from a year earlier, the JLL report released on April 23 showed.

Only two of the 20 cities polled by JLL saw an increase in office building vacancy rate in the period, with Chongqing recording a 1.5 percentage point increase to 28.1 percent, according to the report. The figure in China’s four first-tier cities Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen reached 12 percent, 23 percent, 21 percent, and 26 percent, respectively. 

Law firms continued their expansion tendency from the end of last year to become the major drivers of demand in the office building market. Educational institutions were also active in multiple provincial capitals, such as Guangzhou, Chengdu, Nanjing, Wuhan, and Xi’an. 

Besides the traditional financial sector, small-loan companies also had active demand for new offices in municipalities including Chongqing and Hefei. Office building demand from companies engaged in e-commerce livestreaming-related fields also emerged in many cities, such as Haikou, Changchun, and Nanchang.

The Chinese office building market picked up thanks to the country’s general economic recovery trend. However, office building rents continued to fall in the first quarter, as the average monthly rent for office buildings in China’s 40 major cities dropped between 0.4 percent and 6.6 percent to CNY84 (USD12) per square meter, according to JLL’s report.

More policies to stabilize economic growth will be implemented to boost the marginal improvement of social expectations, with the gradual clearance of a series of major risks affecting China’s macroeconomic fundamentals, JLL predicted. 

Editor: Futura Costaglione