REA Insights Commercial Property Snapshot, February 2021

In January we saw a strong start to 2021 with a record-breaking volume of ‘Buy’ searches and new records set for specific category searches.

The standout of this month’s snapshot, however, was the increased interest for warehouses across both the ‘Buy’ and ‘Lease’ sectors, as the category continues to flourish amid volatile COVID-19 conditions.

In this month’s commercial snapshot, we continue to track search volumes over time and demand by category. We also provide a view of user behaviour by analysing the most-searched keywords per asset class as well as looking at the most popular commercial property listings for the month.

How are search volumes tracking?

National ‘Buy’ search volumes hit a record-high in January 2021, brought about by new search records in Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia.

After outperforming the other states for most of 2020, demand to buy commercial property in the Australian Capital Territory has started to plateau with search volumes only 4% higher than they were last year.

A similar trend in the leasing sector was observed last month with ‘Lease’ search volumes at their second highest on record. Nationally, ‘Lease’ searches were up 34% year-on-year with the highest growth reported in Victoria (28%) and Tasmania (27%).

Record-high search volumes were also observed for multiple categories. Searches for hotel/leisure, medical/consulting, commercial farming, showrooms and industrial/warehouse listings were the highest they have ever been on realcommercial.com.au.

What are people and businesses looking to buy?

Categories that saw the largest year-on-year growth in ‘Buy’ views per listing were the showrooms (91%), land/development (86%) and warehouses (80%) categories.

The increased interest for showrooms was nation-wide, with year-on-year growth recorded across all states, most notably in Victoria (129%) and Western Australia (110%) which saw the highest growth.

While Tasmania was the clear leader for growing interest in land/development listings, with a 146 % increase in views per listing compared to the same time last year, Northern Territory (113%) and Western Australia (102%) saw the largest year-on-year increase for the warehouse sector.

What are people and businesses looking to lease?

In the lease sector, warehouses recorded the highest year-on-year growth in views per listing nationally (70%). All states recorded high year-on-year growth, with Western Australia (78%), New South Wales (74%) and Queensland (74%) being the highest growth states.

Nationally, views per listing for the retail sector (64%) and medical/consulting sectors (61%) saw high year-on-year growth in January. This can attributed to the increase in demand for retail across all states and demand for leasing medical/consulting listings in ACT on the rise (103%).

Hotels/leisure listing in Western Australia were another notable standout this month, having increased by 137% year-on-year in views per listing, with almost double the number of listings and four times the number of property views compared to January last year.

What are the features that people and businesses are looking for?

With the acceleration of e-commerce, commercial property seekers have also widened their search for industrial/warehouse-type listings to other categories.

The keyword ‘warehouse’ appears in the top 3 list for both showroom/bulky goods and office searches while ‘industrial’ makes the top 10 list among land/development searches.

Commercial property seekers are also searching for ‘storefronts’ among retail listings and ‘caravan parks’ within hotel/leisure listings. It will be interesting to see whether the trend for these searches continue in the new year.

What have been the most popular commercial listings?

See the top 10 most viewed commercial listings nationally and in each state below.

The most-viewed commercial listing in January was the Brewed café in Yatala, QLD. Off the motorway, this property is in close proximity to a business park.