Commercial Property Market

Parramatta City has developed a sophisticated commercial office market. The city centre, with nearly 650,000 square metres of office space, is the third largest suburban office market in Australia. Since 2000, the city’s commercial office stock has grown by around 18 percent which is comparable with the Sydney CBD and outstrips other major commercial office markets such as Chatswood and North Sydney.

Parramatta’s status as Sydney’s second CBD, together with infrastructure improvements and government commitments to invest and relocate to Parramatta has spurred private sector investment. Today, major corporate presence in the city includes Capital Finance, AGC, Suncorp, Colonial First State, Telstra and the NRMA. As a result of this investment, commercial office space in Parramatta City recorded an increase of 65 percent since 1990 as shown in the table below.

Office Occupancy

The total vacancy factor for all useable office space in the Parramatta CBD was 7.3 percent in July 2008, 1.5 percent lower than the level recorded in 2007. While total office space has increased through new development and refurbishment, office vacancies in Parramatta are continuing on a downward trend.

Retail Floor Space

Parramatta is one of Sydney’s largest retail centres and currently has an estimated 230,000 square metres of retail space. Since 1971, retail space has grown by over 100,000 square metres due to improved pedestrian and public transport access as well as the completion of a major shopping extension by the Westfield complex.

Office Rents

A distinguishing feature of Parramatta’s office stock is the high proportion of A-grade space. Commercial A-grade office rents in the city centre - well under $300 per square metre - is about half of what they are in the Sydney CBD and considerably lower than most other office markets in Sydney.

Table: Grade A Office Rents, July 2005 - June 2008

Note: figures for January and February 2007 not available

Source: Laing + Simmons Commercial Research