Singapore prime retail rents up 1.4% in Q4 2024

Rents increased by 3.0% for the whole year.

According to a Knight Frank report, the retail operating environment remains challenging due to prevailing high labour, occupational and material costs.

In the last quarter of 2024, the average gross rent of prime retail spaces island-wide grew 1.4% q-o-q to S$27.80 psf pm, increasing 3.0% for the entire year (Exhibit 1).

Here’s more from Knight Frank:

Additionally, more Meetings Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) events took place in Singapore in Q4 2024. Some of the major MICE events during the quarter included the WorldChefs Congress & Expo 2024 in October and the World Architecture Festival in November.

As such, prime retail rents in the Marina Centre, City Hall, Bugis micromarket chalked up the highest quarterly growth of 2.8% and a yearly growth of 4.7% to S$26.30 psf pm by the year’s end on the back of improving MICE activities.

Retail sales performance

Total retail sales (excluding motor vehicles) reached S$3.6 billion in both October and November 2024, a similar volume to that registered in the same two-month period a year ago, as consumers prepared to ring in the year end festivities and the new year.

The proportion of online retail sales fell 1.7 percentage points (pp) to 14.5% in October, but it increased 2.1 pp to 16.6% in November on the back of 11.11, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales combined.