Perth’s CBD office vacancy sits at 16.9 per cent, the second highest of any Australian capital city behind only Melbourne. A short drive away in the city’s industrial precincts, vacancy is under 3 per cent and falling toward the tightest in the country. Two halves of the same Perth commercial market, moving in opposite directions, and the gap between them keeps widening.
Property Council of Australia’s February 2026 Office Market Report recorded the CBD figure, a modest 0.1 percentage point fall from the previous survey six months earlier. Property Council WA Executive Director Nicola Brischetto described the city as having entered an “unprecedented drought” of new office supply, with the report’s forward projections showing no new CBD stock expected over the next three years, the first time three consecutive years of nil supply has been recorded since the survey began in January 1990. CBRE’s research team, commenting on the same release, placed Perth among the markets that has “turned the corner” on vacancy even as Melbourne and Canberra continue to face headwinds.
Industrial tells close to the opposite story. Cushman & Wakefield’s Q1 2026 Perth MarketBeat put the headline industrial vacancy rate at 2.7 per cent, falling to 1.9 per cent once sublease space is excluded from the count. JLL’s research arm recorded a tighter figure again for the same quarter, 2.0 per cent, still the lowest of any capital city in the country despite ticking up 0.3 percentage points over the three months. The two firms differ slightly on the exact number, largely a function of how each measures precinct boundaries and what counts as available stock, but they agree on the direction.
The tightness in industrial is not a new development. Perth has held the lowest, or close to the lowest, industrial vacancy of any capital city for several consecutive quarters, a function of constrained serviced industrial land, sustained demand from logistics, mining services and trade businesses, and a development pipeline that has not kept pace. JLL noted that combined sublease vacancy across Perth and Adelaide sits below 0.3 per cent of total stock, a sign that even the usual safety valve of subletting offers tenants very little room to move.
For owners sitting on older office assets, the divergence raises a real question worth weighing rather than rushing. A building that struggles to attract tenants at competitive CBD rates may have more to offer through repositioning, whether that means a change of use, a partial conversion, or simply holding through a period where supply stays constrained and rents firm. None of this is a one size fits all answer. The right call differs site by site depending on title, zoning, floor plate and structural grid, and a conversation with a valuer or planning consultant is worth more than a general rule of thumb.
What the current data does suggest is that treating “Perth commercial property” as a single market is less useful than it used to be. Office and industrial are responding to different drivers right now, supply in one case and land scarcity in the other, and decisions made on a blended view of the market risk missing the mark on timing, pricing, or both. Whether the gap narrows through the rest of 2026 will depend largely on whether any speculative office development gets the green light, and whether industrial land releases in the outer corridors keep pace with demand that, on the current numbers, shows little sign of easing.
Source List
- Property Council of Australia, Office Market Report media release, 5 February 2026, https://www.propertycouncil.com.au/media-releases/perth-cbd-enters-unprecedented-drought-of-new-office-supply-records-modest-drop-in-vacancy
- CBRE Australia, commentary on Property Council office vacancy statistics, February 2026, https://www.cbre.com.au/press-releases/cbre-commentary-property-council-of-australia-office-vacancy-statistics-february-2026
- Cushman & Wakefield, Perth MarketBeat, Q1 2026, https://www.cushmanwakefield.com/en/australia/insights/perth-marketbeat
- JLL Research, Industrial Real Estate Market Analysis Q1 2026, https://www.jll.com/en-au/insights/market-dynamics/latest-industrial-vacancy-rates-across-australia
Internal note: figures sourced and checked at time of writing. Confirm any comparable sales, legislative status, or index figures against the live source before this goes live on the website.
