Mubadala Real Estate is to restart a search for tenants at Abu Dhabi’s largest new office development, two years after leasing activity was put on hold.
The Abu Dhabi-based fund said yesterday that it would market the remaining vacant office space at its 180,000 square metres Abu Dhabi Global Market Square on Al Maryah Island at this week’s Cityscape property show.
Although two of the four vast office blocks in Abu Dhabi’s new financial district have been nearly fully let soon after the complex opened in 2011, leasing on the remaining two, accounting for half of the available space, was suspended in 2013 while Mubadala waited to see how new rules governing the operations of the city’s financial free zone affected tenants.
But in October, the financial free zone declared itself open for business following the publication of new draft laws in January last year.
This means that ADGM Square’s two final office blocks, Al Sarab and Al Khatem, which between them account for 98,000 square metres of top-grade office space, have come back to the market.
The rapid increase in grade A office space is likely to further subdue Abu Dhabi office rents, which are already feeling the strain of low oil prices.
Property brokers say that rents at ADGM Square stand at about Dh2,600 per sq metre – down from more than Dh3,000 at the start of the year.
“With four Grade A commercial buildings … the island’s amenities and offerings have made this one of the most sought-after business districts in Abu Dhabi,” said Ali Eid AlMheiri, the executive director of Mubadala Real Estate and Infrastructure.
lbarnard@thenational.ae
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