MRCB-Quill REIT unfazed by office space oversupply

KUALA LUMPUR (April 11): MRCB-Quill REIT (MQREIT) is confident of maintaining its performance at a desirable level despite facing oversupply issues in the office space market.

Speaking to the press today, MQREIT chief executive officer Yong Su-Lin expected that the market is going to be challenging this year.

However, she believed the company can leverage on the strength of its strong assets portfolio to continue to deliver satisfactory results.

"We are aware of oversupply issue (office space) in the market, but [the] majority of our assets [are] located at desirable locations, thus we can withstand the challenges better," she said.

Besides that, Yong expected the recovery of oil prices could be one of the catalysts to drive the demand for office space, as the activities of oil and gas sector picked up.

"When the oil prices to reach US$70 per barrel, hopefully we will see higher demand for office space from [the] oil and gas sector," she said.

Yong also stressed that even though MQREIT was facing competition from new upcoming buildings, the cost of relocation was also a consideration for tenants.

MQREIT managed to achieve renewable rate of 80% last year. The rest of the renewable leases were carried towards this year. Furthermore, the occupancy rate for 2017 was 96.3%.

"For this year, approximately 26% of company net lettable assets (NLA) are due to [be] renewed, [and] mainly fall into second half of the year," she added.

As for today, MQREIT's total net lettable area of the portfolio was 2.2 million square feet. — theedgemarkets.com

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