North Sydney Office Market Decline Overstated, says New JLL Chief

The decline of the northern Sydney office market may be overstated, with tech-tenant demand likely to drive activity over the next decade. That’s the forecast from JLL , with new research showing data centres and health research hubs will connect with housing precincts along the northwest Metro line. Speaking at a JLL briefing on July 30, incoming chief executive Selina Short warned of “a real pinch around supply of really high quality [commercial] assets in the CBD”. “The reality is there are very few new buildings coming out of the ground in the CBD … I think the transport connection piece can help short-circuit that,” Short said. “People being able to get to their place of work with a feasible, sensible commute—that there is affordable housing within the vicinity—I think is a really important part of any strategy.” According to JLL, the 16,100 build-to-sell units in northern Sydney are joined by 4400 build-to-rent and 1800 PBSA homes. However, just 7 per cent of those build-to-rent apartments are in the construction phase, compared to 58 per cent of the PBSA units. Business Sydney executive director Paul Nicolaou said that the backstory to the region’s success lay in infrastructure underpinned by asset recycling and strategic planning. ▲ A contracting supply pipeline, and growth of tech tenants will support office markets north of the Harbour, JLL said. “I’m of Greek background, and I love going to Greece, right? But you know, you can’t flush toilet paper down the toilet [over there],” Nicolaou said, referring to the high quality of Australian infrastructure. Sydney markets would always have a competitive edge over domestic rivals when it comes to attracting tech tenants, despite the pull of the Olympics in Brisbane. “At the end of the day, we’ve got an ocean and beautiful harbor. They’ve got a brown river, as does Melbourne, and you don’t even know whether there’s fish in there or not,” Nicolaou said. Committee for Sydney chief executive Eamon Waterford told attendees that Metro expansions would also extend the Marchetti constant (or comfortable commutable distance) from North Sydney to as far as Bankstown. “People are willing to commute about 30 minutes, give or take, in the morning and in the evening. Any more than that, they start hating life,” Waterford said. “Macquarie Park has more jobs than Parramatta. Macquarie Park has got a good argument to be made for it being the second CBD of Sydney. ▲ Macquarie Technology Group’s expanding data centre campus will partner with Macquarie University researchers. “So that co-location of people delighted to come to work in this corridor will be a very large proportion of this city, and that is quite a transformation in terms of the scale.” The emergence of AI-enabled workplaces will complement the existing health and education sectors in the northern corridor, speakers said. JLL research director Vivienne Bolla said that hospitals and universities “aren’t just assets; they are anchors, high value anchors”. “They generate high value employment, attract local talent, and sustain long term demand for housing,” Bolla said. Adding data centres into the mix is “positioning northern Sydney as Australia’s cloud corridor and diversifying its economic base”.

Office
Patrick Lau
Fri 07 Aug 26

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