Redefine Properties forecasts office vacancies to drop below 10% next year

Our take

For South African property investors and commercial landlords, this forecast matters. Office vacancies have been a persistent drag on REIT distributions and asset valuations since 2020, with many Johannesburg and Cape Town nodes sitting well above 15% at the height of the hybrid-work transition. If Redefine — a bellwether for the sector — genuinely moves into single-digit vacancies, it signals that the flight-to-quality trend is doing real work: tenants are consolidating into well-located, well-amenitised buildings and abandoning older, poorly serviced stock. For buy-to-let investors watching commercial property as an alternative asset class, improving occupancy translates directly into more predictable distributions and potential net asset value recovery. For office tenants currently negotiating leases, the window for aggressive rental discounts may be narrowing — landlords with tighter vacancy books have less incentive to offer deep incentives. The caveat: 'strengthening fundamentals' is management guidance, not audited fact. Investors should watch Redefine's next results announcement for hard occupancy and rental reversion data before repositioning. The broader listed-property sector on the JSE will be watching closely.